


the last time you were happy

by alekszova



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Child Death, Depression, Hate to Love, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Loneliness, M/M, Rape Recovery, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicide, gavin is NOT a rapist yall better stop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-12 23:17:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20572571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: Gavin is never people's first choice. He knows that. But after Tina stops talking to him and Connor proves to be a better friend for her, it sends Gavin down a path of hatred and loneliness that backfires on him, but it's nothing he isn't used to.





	1. Chapter 1

Everybody loves Connor. Everybody is so happy he’s here. He solves crimes quickly, constantly being tugged to a different murder scene, always being the one to bring in a suspect. Often times being the one to get the confession out of them.

Gavin fucking hates him. Everything about him is something that fills him with fury he doesn’t know what to do with. And honestly, when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, he saw Tina by his side. He was fine with Connor being buddy-buddy with Chris, but Tina?

She was  _ his _ . She was  _ his  _ best friend. She was  _ his  _ confidant.

She was the person Gavin could trust and give everything to. She was the one that was supposed to be at his side forever. She was the only person he was ever convinced wouldn’t leave him, because throughout all of her life, no matter what, she stuck with him.

It started off small. Tina not being able to hang out with him after work because she was going to Hank’s place. And then it grew and grew. Canceling plans and not calling him. Their conversations at work no longer meaning anything because they stopped having them in the first place and they were thrust back into silence like before.

He’s alone again, and it’s Connor’s fault.

He thought his hatred before was wrongly directed to Connor, but now it felt like it was deserved. He apologized before. A stupid  _ I’m sorry  _ muttered quickly in the middle of a conversation and an  _ Okay  _ following it up shortly. Nothing else. It didn’t mean they were friends, but it meant they could work together without the tension between them. He wants to take it back now.

It’s such a cruel thought. It reminds him of what a disgusting human being he is. He’s known that for his entire life, though.

Never enough. Never good enough. It didn’t matter how hard he worked, it would never amount to anything. Nothing he’d ever be proud of, because even if it was absolutely perfect, nobody would give a shit.

He remembers as a kid, he would make something and he’d show it to his friends or his family or even the art teacher while in class, and nobody ever cared. It never mattered how good he felt about something he made or how much work he put into something he did, everybody else was always ambivalent. He thinks maybe that’s why he always feels so strongly towards things. Separated clean in two of hate and love. Feeling too strongly that it cuts him down and clouds his judgment.

It feels stupid to leave his desk in the middle of the day, to pretend he’s going out to reinterview a witness when instead he’s sitting in his car sobbing, heaving in gasps for air and letting them out in half screams because he overheard Connor and Tina talking about their plans tonight and how fun their stupid fucking get together was before.

Connor stole her away and she was the only thing he had left.

  
  


Loneliness is funny, he thinks.

Gavin got used to it fairly quickly. He never had many friends in school and even then, none of them really stuck around after he graduated. Even more falling away throughout college. Dropping like flies when they got busy with their own lives. It was understandable and he was good at dealing with time spent apart from others.

He was used to it--being alone. There were nights when he would stay up crying for hours because he craved human touch and attention, but for the most part he could handle it. One day slipping by into the next. Surrounding himself with things that would fill in the empty gaps. 

But then Tina and Chris came along when he joined the DPD. Befriending them was such a strange feeling.  _ Breath of fresh air,  _ he’s heard people say. Maybe that’s it. The feeling of being alive again. He was laughing and smiling and cracking jokes that they laughed and smiled at in return. Chris got married, but that was okay. He was still around. He was still there, even if all-consumed by his work and family life.

It was him and Tina, really, against the world.

He doesn’t remember ever being happy until he met her. She’s his best friend. Platonic soulmate. He’d go to the ends of the earth for her. To the moon and back. Infinity and beyond.

And then Connor came along and it ruined everything.

He stupidly, selfishly thought he was used to loneliness before, and he was, but he was also used to having friends, too. He got used to their movie nights and laughing together. He got used to hearing silly stories and anecdotes. Now there’s nothing. Radio silence. It feels like something he should be able to handle, when he’d so easily accepted it as his life, but it’s worse than it was before. His school friends fell away naturally and he just never made new ones to replace the void. It didn’t feel like a sudden cut off. It just  _ was _ . Drifting apart. Life goes on.

This feels like he lost a limb.

It’s easy, he thinks, to make someone more important to him than he is to them. He knew for a while that he wasn’t the most important person in Tina’s life. He was just there. Existing among all the others. Unimportant and unnecessary.

Doesn’t even fucking matter.

He never fucking matters.

  
  


He smokes more now than he did before. An excuse to get out of the building even if it means staying later to finish up work. He doesn’t care anymore. He hasn’t cared for a long time. He only ever stayed because he was good at the job and he liked the forced connection he had with Tina. Quitting would mean they’d stop talking forever, but apparently even that’s not true. Not when someone like Connor shows up and fills in the space of  _ friend from work  _ better than he could.

It’s fucking agony, realizing how little he mattered. It fucking hurts realizing that he only existed in her life because she was waiting for someone better to come along. That he only ever amounted to  _ work friend _ and not  _ best friend. _

She was his best friend.

He’s not hers.

It was stupid to ever believe that he would be.

Has he ever looked at himself? Saw how disgusting and vile he is? It was a wonder she ever put up with him for a second, let alone all these years.

  
  


It’s been a long time.

He hasn’t done this in years--but the relief of hot metal against skin is still the same. Physical pain triumphing over emotional pain. Forcing that mental train of thought to snap in half. Force the loneliness to leave and for this to settle in.

The pain dissipates after a few seconds when he pulls the file away and he knows he won’t let it count. If it doesn’t leave a scar, it won’t count.

He tries again, this time pressing harder, letting the nail file heat up longer. Another little rectangle he can add to the collection. Dozens on his left thigh, a few scattered here and there on the right. His arms covered up always, but never any additions made anymore. He ran out of room years ago.

It’s okay.

There is always something to destroy.

It still hurts the next morning. A dulled pain that tells him it’ll stay.

He feels numb now. That’s all he wanted--to feel numb for a little bit. To carry on with his life. The pain will come back, but it won’t be for a while. He’s bought himself a few days or a week. That’s all he needed.

  
  


“Why do you hate me so much?”

He looks up to Connor’s face, watching the way his eyebrows pull together. The little lock of his hair that’s never brushed back properly. He always wants to wet his hands with gel and fix it. Put it where it belongs.

“I don’t fucking know. Get off my desk. I have work to do.”

“You do know,” Connor says, shifting. “And I’m going to stay until you tell me.”

Always such a fucking people pleaser. Looking for all his wrongs so he can fix himself. Make him as wanted by everyone as possible.

Gavin remembers, vaguely, of the times he tried that. Tried to be as kind as he could, tried to apologize properly, tried to fix things. His apartment is a mess now. Everything always in the middle of being organized some new way because he always has these moments in the middle of the night where he needs to scrape himself clean and change who he is. That somehow, organizing his cans of soup alphabetically or grouping them together with like-ingredients will change his interiors.

It doesn’t.

It never works.

Halfway through he always realizes how fucking stupid he is and he starts crying on the kitchen floor. At first over something stupid, like there not being enough space to put things where he wants to and then dissolving into how fucking useless he’s been his entire life because he can’t even put his cans of soup away properly.

“You don’t like androids. Why?”

“There’s not some deep fucking story,” he says. “Just tired of them. Fucking everywhere. Taking jobs. Doing nothing.  _ Get off my desk.” _

Connor seems to move closer, even though Gavin’s sure he hasn’t budged, “And me, specifically?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“The truth.”

“You’re a piece of shit,” he says, picking the only words he can get to come to mind. He feels like a mean girl in a shitty teen drama, but he goes with it. Reaching forward and pushing Connor towards the edge of the desk. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

Connor stands, moving away. “Okay.”

  
  


He supposes there is a little bit he’s learned through the years of silence and isolation. He will never admit the truth to anything. He can lie and lie and lie as much as he desires and people will either stop trying to seek out what the actual problem is and accept whatever answer they’re given.

Not that it was a lie--the reasons he hates Androids. They’re just minor, unimportant things in his long list of reasons why he hates Connor. And those are things he will never admit.

  
  


Burning his skin always seems to shut off the tears instantly. He hasn’t cried from physical pain since he broke his leg when he was twelve years old and his father called him a baby and made him feel even stupider than he already does. Physical pain isn’t something to cry about. It’s the shut off mechanism.

Emotional pain is harder to reign in. He always breaks down in the end. Always just managing to last as long as it takes to be alone and then they never stop. He has to do it himself, more often than not because they will never stop spilling if he lets them go. Hours and hours until his head feels like it’s going to break apart. This is his safety net. A lighter and a metal nail file. It’s all he has now.

  
  


It’s been almost a year. Tina hasn’t talked to him in three months. Not a word between them that wasn’t work-related, and even then it’s a rarity.

But he’s fine. He’ll be fine. He is getting used to the loneliness again. Carefully numbing himself away. Soon there won’t be a part of him that isn’t used to the isolation.

  
  


His only human contact in the last five years of his life, if he doesn’t count Tina, has been through violence or sex and sometimes, more often, both. He prefers it in very specific ways. Using it as a punishment rather than a pleasure. When he has a broken finger to tend to or bruises to cover or burn marks on his body to clean and dress, it is easier to distract his thoughts. Watching his body mend and heal, almost like he needs to prove it to himself that it has the capacity to stitch itself back together again, even if it always leaves a sign of its damage behind.

Most of the time, when he does find a stranger to fuck, it’s okay. They don’t mind being rough or being quick. They don’t mind leaving the second they’re done. They don’t mind marking him up and leaving him behind. It’s fine. It’s what he prefers. He knows it’s all he will ever amount to. Nothing, a punching bag, or a warm body to fuck.

It’s fine.

It’s fine.

It’s fine.

  
  


It is not fine.

His bottom lip is split. There are stitches along the side of his face. He is lucky he didn’t break any bones, but there are bruises on his waist and his wrists blooming purple and ugly.

He goes to the hospital for it only because he’s worried about head injuries, but he doesn’t want it to go any further. He doesn’t want the rape kit and he doesn’t want the police. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He’ll be fine. He always is in the end. Fine enough to keep living, fine enough to not end his life no matter how many times something like this happens to him.

He’ll be fine.

  
  


“What happened?”

“Nothing,” he whispers, but his voice is hoarse. “I’m fine.”

“Gavin--”

“No offense, Connor, but I don’t have time for your fake concern.”

Connor watches him leave, silent and face still painted in worry. He doesn’t believe it for a bit. If Gavin hates Connor as much as he does, it must be mutual in some way, and that will erase any authenticity to his concern over Gavin’s well-being.

He doesn’t need him.

  
  


The television is on, but he isn’t paying attention despite carefully picking what he was going to watch. Sifting through all of the shows until something appealed to him. Something as equally dark and depressive as he feels. He doesn’t want to try and balance it out with comedy right now. He’s tried that before, and he ended up breaking the screen from how hard he threw the remote at it in anger or jealousy, he isn’t quite sure. He just wishes he could be happy. He doesn’t remember the last time he was happy.

The knock on the door startles him out of staring at the floorboards, but he stays for a moment, waiting to hear it again as confirmation that he didn’t make it up. But it comes once more. Three hard knocks before he’s getting up to his feet, walking across the apartment and opening the door.

“Connor? What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I made a list,” he says quietly, holding out a piece of paper. “Of therapists in the city. I think… I think you should see one.”

He snaps it out of Connor’s grasp, not looking at it, just crumpling it up and throwing it back at him. “The fuck is wrong with you? You think I want your help?”

“No, but I think you need it.”

“I don’t,” he says, sharp and angry and it is always so easy to let that anger slide back in and take over the place of numbness or sadness. “I need for you to leave me the fuck alone.”

“Gavin--”

“Go.  _ Away.” _

“You shut everyone out,” Connor says, voice almost desperate and angry like Gavin’s is. “Just let me in. Just for a second.”

“I don’t need your help.”

Connor reaches out to him, but pauses halfway there, like Gavin made a move to shove him back. But he hadn’t. He stayed still. If Connor really wanted to touch him, to hold onto him, he could’ve.

It feels like a slap across the face. That he could see the moment Connor realized what he’d be doing, how quickly it clicked in his head that the person in front of him was Gavin Reed and not Chris or Tina. Not someone he would actually be better off being around and offering his help to.

“I just want to be alone,” he says finally. “Just let me be alone.”

Connor is shaking his head, and Gavin can’t tell if it’s a refusal to abide by what Gavin said or if it’s out of annoyance, disapproval, maybe. Maybe Connor just knows that what he’s saying is a lie. That Gavin doesn’t want to be alone. That all he’s wanted in the last few days, especially, was to have someone next to him and tell him that he’s going to be okay. That when the cut on his lip heals and when the stitches are removed from his body and the bruises fade away, that everything inside of him will be fixed, too.

It never is, but he can hope, can’t he?

“Let me in, Gavin.”

“Why?”

Connor does the same thing. The half-reach towards him, the hand dropping away, curling into a fist and hiding behind his back. “Just let me stay the night. I’ll leave in the morning.”

“You don’t trust me alone?”

“I don’t think you should be alone, no.”

He doesn’t want to agree to this. He wants to push Connor away. He wants to tell him to fuck off again. He wants to go back to sitting in silence in his living room regretting that he did all of those things, because he knows he would if he does.

“Give me a reason.”

“What?”

“Give me a reason you think I shouldn’t be alone.”

Connor looks away from his face, gaze shifting down the hallway and then to the floor, then to his hands which are in front of him again. “I can see it.”

“What?”

“I can see it,” he says quietly. “On a loop, in my head. CyberLife wanted me to have the ability to… to reconstruct crime scenes. And it’s--it’s broken, I think. I don’t know. But I can see it. What happened to you. Parts of it on a loop.”

_ Parts of it. _

He wouldn’t be able to discern all of it, not with the way Gavin dresses. Loose and baggy clothing, covering every inch of his body he can.

But Connor can see his face. The cuts and the bruises there.

He wonders what it looks like. If Gavin’s attacker is just a faceless thing. How in detail are the punches against his face? How graphic is it? Can Connor see the blood from where the vase broke over the side of his head, or does he just see the impact of it, telling him where he was cut? How many times does it show the punches? Does it show the parts where he was suffocated by pillows to cover his face when he started crying, because the tears appeared to be such a turn-off?

“Okay,” he whispers. “Come in.”

  
  


Gavin doesn’t really sleep. He hasn’t slept since it happened. He wakes up too often expecting that the dream was from blacking out from being suffocated into unconsciousness. His body is always in a state of being sore, which he’s thankful for. The pain staves off the tears, which haven’t come since it happened.

Connor is still here. Gavin checks every hour when he can’t seem to drift off, despite his attempts at it. Double-checking that his guard-dog is still on the couch, eyes closed, LED yellow.

There’s a time when it switches to red, just as Gavin’s about to turn away, and he leans against the wall, frozen and surprised, stuck standing there watching the deep color never shift back to yellow again.

And then Connor is the one waking up, gasping for air, hands flying to his chest and then the couch, holding onto it and the blankets like a safety railing down a flight of stairs. And Gavin’s first thought is how much effort it must’ve taken for the programmers and creators to put an android together like that. To mimic human reactions to what he assumes is a nightmare or that Connor even sleeps to begin with, that he would yearn for oxygen like it’s a requirement.

And then he is thinking, selfishly, that at least he is not alone in his trauma from this world.

  
  


It doesn’t change much. It barely changes anything.

That’s a lie, though, isn’t it?

It changes everything.

  
  


Tina doesn’t revert back into his friend like she was before. She seems to have forgotten he exists, he thinks. But Connor sometimes passes by his desk and offers conversation. There is always the sly, very subtle option for him to come over to stay the night.

Gavin doesn’t always accept. It would be too obvious for him too. That it helps him sleep at night, sometimes, when there is someone like Connor in the next room.

He tries not to allow himself to get used to this new conversation they have, this relationship they’re developing. Gavin isn’t sure if he considers it a friendship or not. It feels wrong, too, after everything that’s happened. But Connor manages to make him smile, and he can’t say that he’s done that in over a year.

  
  


“What are your dreams like?” Gavin asks. It feels stupid and wrong to question such a personal thing, but Connor doesn’t seem to take offense.

“Falling,” he says. “Failing.”

“Falling?”

Connor nods, his LED flickering to red, the conversation stopping there, not to be continued. Gavin doesn’t press, letting it flip to something else. Anything else. Maybe it’s better if they don’t know each other’s deep dark secrets when they can barely handle their own.

  
  


“You don’t have to keep coming over.”

“You don’t have to keep accepting my offers.”

No. He guesses he doesn’t. But if they stopped coming, he knows he would be driven back into that painful feeling of loneliness again. It’s still there. He’s still all by himself. Connor’s friendship with him isn’t quite the same as it was with Tina. It doesn’t fill him up, it doesn’t distract him from anything. It’s just an addition to his life. A spoonful of sugar, or however the saying goes. Except it isn’t medicine, it’s just the feeling of life dragging on and on and on again.

  
  


The power is out and he knows what’s going to happen even before it does. The two of them have the little light-hearted nature of their conversation go with everything else. Everything turns dark and heavy once the lights are gone and only the moon and blinking lights of phones and LEDs fill the space.

Connor’s is red. He watches it stay red, beating steadily like a heartbeat, and Gavin doesn’t know what to do. If he should pretend it isn’t there. If he should pretend that he doesn’t hear the tremor in Connor’s voice as he tries to keep their conversation the same as it was before.

Gavin doesn’t even remember what he was talking about. He isn’t focused on the words anymore. Just the steady rhythm of  _ red, red, red. _

“Are you afraid of the dark?”

“W-What?” 

“Connor,” he says quietly. “It’s okay if you are, you know.”

“I’m not scared of the dark, Gavin. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“No?” he shifts closer, and it is so pitch-black in this space, he can only use his memory of where Connor was sitting and the light of the LED to guide him. It is never this dark in his place. There is always the light of streetlamps and buildings and the life of the city to keep things dim enough to see here, but it’s all washed out in a dark black now. The blackout not just affecting this apartment or this building, but the streets outside.

“I’m not scared,” Connor whispers, but when Gavin’s hand finds his, he can feel the fingers trembling and he holds onto them, trying to still the movements.

He has an urge to hug him. It isn’t the first time and it doesn’t come as a surprise, but the desire is washed away as quickly as it ever is. This is all he can handle now, he thinks. Holding onto his hand and trying to reassure him that he’s here, that it’s okay.

Except he can’t find the words and he doesn’t think this is enough. Fear isn’t that easily swayed anyways, and he feels rotten that this is all he can offer, all he can ever offer, he thinks. The idea of someone being closer than this to him is making his stomach turn with the memory of a different body, smelling strongly of peppermint and hands in his mouth, fingers stuck down his throat to keep him quiet.

He hates that the memory is resurfacing, too. Making this about him instead of Connor, but he can’t help it. He’s thinking about it again and he’s always thinking about it when something like this happens. When somebody hits him a little too hard during sex or a hand presses over his throat and he has to claw at the fingers like a crazed lunatic because he hates the feeling of being suffocated.

“Gavin?”

“I’m scared, too,” he whispers finally.

The dark offers too much room for imagination. Brings too much empty space for memories to flow in and fill up. Drown him out. Leave nothing behind but all the times that he was hurt, all the times he never tried to do anything about it and just let it happen.

There’s a sudden press of lips against his forehead. So soft and tender and barely there that for a moment he thinks he imagines it until he feels Connor move away. His vision blurred by tears that aren’t quite falling and memories breaking up his thought process.

“Sorry,” Connor murmurs. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

He shouldn’t have, but Gavin doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t mind it. He can’t tell if it’s for the selfish reason that now he’s distracted from the thoughts by the feeling of Connor’s hand tightening around his and the fuzzy feeling he gets, like static, where the kiss was placed. It breaks up the thoughts. He just doesn’t know if it’s the actions or the person. The android. The thing.

Connor is supposed to be just a thing.

  
  


“Do you have any candles? Flashlights?”

He nods in the dark, pulling his hand away from Connor’s. They stayed like that for longer than they should’ve before the question was asked. He thinks an hour, maybe. But it’s hard to tell time in the dark. It passes by either too fast or too slow to keep up, and his phone died ten minutes after the blackout started.

Gavin moves around the apartment, finding a flashlight first and a few candles second. He doesn’t own a lighter that’s well suited for them, just the one for his cigarettes and the one he keeps in his bedside table, zipped up in a little pouch with a metal nail file. He keeps them separate. It feels like a requirement. He can’t use the same lighter or it will remind him of how nice it is to have the breakage from emotion and thought when he presses the metal against his skin. Before, he did, and it always resulted in the cigarettes being put out against his forearm instead of crushed under his heel.

He sifts through his jacket pocket, finding a lighter and lighting the only three candles he has, setting them carefully in a row on the kitchen counter. Candles provide shit light, he thinks, but it’s better than nothing.

“Gavin?”

He looks up, lost and a little numb. He didn’t realize Connor was standing so close to him and it makes him take a step back into the countertop, feeling the fake granite hit his back hard. “What?”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he replies on instinct.

“You sure?”

He nods slowly, letting his gaze drift away from Connor’s face and to the dark shadows of the room. It’s late, he thinks. He’s tired all of the sudden. Like his exhaustion has finally caught up with him. 

“Gavin? Can you look at me?”

He does, slowly, prepared with a joke. That Connor keeps saying his name, that Connor must be trying to get him to like him. Isn’t that a thing? People say another person’s name and it fires neurons or whatever the fuck to make the other like them more?

How stupid.

But he doesn’t say anything, because his words are choked out by Connor’s hand, touching his face. Cupping his chin for a moment, thumb grazing along the side of his jaw. It might as well be a fist around his throat, with how much it stops him from breathing and thinking.

“Connor--”

“Can I kiss you?”

A beat of silence.

“No,” he says, and it comes out like he’s in pain. A guttural sound broken and fractured with the utter refusal, the almost disgust. He regrets how he says it. He doesn’t regret saying it. Even if it makes Connor pull away like a wounded puppy, face falling. Not the answer he probably expected.

“S-Sorry,” he says quietly, moving away fast, breaking from Gavin’s personal space and retreating back further and further.

“Connor--”

“I’ll go,” he says. “It’s--I’ll go.”

“Stay,” he whispers, reaching out to him like Connor is even close enough to grab onto. “Please.”

He doesn’t want to be alone and he doesn’t want Connor to leave and he doesn’t want this feeling and this pain anymore. He doesn’t want anything else anymore. He just wants Connor to stay. He wants Connor to be here. He wants to take it back. He wants to say yes. He feels horrible, like the moment is only reaffirming that he’ll never be able to properly control his immediate reactions to things. He will only ever be cruel and he will only ever regret it.

Connor is standing there in silence, his jacket in his hand, hanging over his arm. Half ready to keep leaving and half ready to stay.

“I’m--” he fumbles over his words, his throat too closed to get them out. “I’m sorry. Stay. Please.”

_ Please, please, please. _

So often he hates how the word sounds on his tongue, always fighting off something, someone. But it doesn’t feel poisonous on his tongue now. It doesn’t feel like it’s rotting him from the inside out.

“I didn’t mean it,” he whispers, feeling some strange need to keep talking. Fill the silence until Connor decides to leave or set his jacket back down. He needs that decision to shut him up. All of his words are spilling out of his mouth now and he can’t stop them. “I didn’t mean no. I just--I meant not right now. I--I like you. I’m sorry. I want--I want--”

“What?” Connor asks, voice quiet. “What do you want?”

“You.”

They’re both silent now, and Gavin’s jaw is trembling. He didn’t even really realize it until now. Not the movement of it, but the words. He hates Connor. He knows he hates Connor. He knows it because the only thing he hates more than himself is  _ Connor.  _ But he wants him to stay and he wants him to ask the question again so he can say yes this time and Connor can kiss him and maybe he can suffocate the nauseating feeling of kissing someone if it’s Connor he’s with. He can ignore all of the past trauma of being forced to do things if it’s Connor next to him.

But he knows that isn’t true, either. It isn’t going to go away and it isn’t going to be something he can ignore just because it’s Connor and just because he actually, for the first time in over a decade, truly wants this.

“I can’t,” Gavin says quietly, knowing he won’t be able to explain this properly. “I can’t kiss you right now.”

“But you want to.”

He nods.

“Okay,” Connor says, setting his jacket down. “I’ll stay. I’ll--I’ll wait.”

“It might be a long time.”

“That’s okay,” Connor says, and he thinks in the dark he sees a small smile on his lips. “I’m patient.”

  
  


“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” Connor says quietly. “But it might help.”

He knows that. He’s dealt with cases like these before. Ones as minor as attempted assaults and ones as major as sex slaves kept in basements for their entire lives, having to live with knowing there are videos of them on the internet before they even had the chance to speak. He knows talking and therapy helps, it just doesn’t mean he’s capable of talking about it.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” he whispers. “You don’t--”

“What?”

“You don’t let me touch you.”

Gavin lifts his gaze up, looking towards Connor’s face in the dark of the bedroom. This is as close as they get to physical affection. Holding hands, occasionally, rarely, and laying side by side on his bed as far apart as the mattress lets them.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. There is more he can add. Excuses or explanations, but he can’t. He doesn’t think Connor knows exactly what happened to him. He just knows that Gavin was beaten up, right?

And if he says anything about it, it will unravel the long list of times and things he has been through, and he doesn’t want to tell any of that to Connor. He doesn’t think it was a coincidence that the first time he was able to fully divulge all of the things that happened to him to Tina that she stopped talking to him less than a few months later. Connor was clearly the better option than the damaged and abused Gavin Reed.

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I do.”

“Gavin,” Connor says, his voice stern. “You don’t. I promise.”

They fall into a comfortable silence, filled only with his thoughts. That he wishes he could let Connor touch him. He wishes that he could feel okay with Connor’s hands on his body and they wouldn’t remind him of how disgusting and corrupted he is. Things he did to himself and things he let happen to him. He doesn’t want it to be like that. He doesn’t want to feel Connor’s hand on his waist or his lips on his and think about everything else and how repulsive he is.

He just--

He just wants to be happy. He just wants to be okay.

He used to beg for that when he was a child again and again, always searching for somebody to save him. He thought he gave that up and traded it in with death wishes and suicidal behavior. He supposes not. Maybe it’s just Connor, making him wish that his life would change and he could be happy. Just for him. Just for the two of them to be something.

“Connor?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t--” he sighs. “I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t hate me?”

“No.”

“Oh,” he can hear the smile in his voice. “I’m glad, then. You know I don’t hate you, either?”

“Shut up,” he whispers, turning his face against the pillow. “Don’t tease me.”

“Okay. I won’t,” he feels Connor’s hand touch his, taking it, tracing patterns across his knuckles. “Get some sleep, okay?”

  
  


People know about them. They aren’t a secret--they’re just a source of confusion. A great question to the other people at the DPD. The way they have so obviously shifted from hating each other to friends to something strange and unknown. Gavin doesn’t know what to call it either. They aren’t dating. Gavin can’t consider it dating until he can allow Connor to kiss him without wanting to run the other direction. He thinks, though, that it wouldn’t have mattered if something happened to him this year. He would probably feel that way anyway. He was never good at affection. He always craved it and he always sought it out but whenever it was given to him he didn’t know how to deal with it. He’d rather end it entirely.

Violence was more familiar. It’s how he knows to act and how to be treated. He hates to admit it, but it’s almost comforting. He knows how to tend to wounds more than he knows how to relax around another person. And that is as far as him and Connor can get. When Connor stays over, which is almost constantly now, he sleeps on the bed with Gavin. He doesn’t mind it. He’s a selfish person. He couldn’t care less if Hank is missing Connor in his house. He misses Tina, doesn’t he? It’s revenge, almost, even though he knows it’s revenge against the wrong person. He thinks of it as keeping Connor from Hank when he should likely think about it as keeping Hank from Connor.

But Gavin doesn’t want to walk that path of jealousy, either. If he thinks about how Hank can make Connor laugh and smile and how little he can get those reactions from Connor himself, he will start to hate Hank again, and he has settled into a normalcy of discontent that he prefers. Less energy to hate, more energy to spend trying to heal together the broken pieces of his body and mind.

It’s difficult. Nights aren’t the hardest parts of his day anymore. He knows Connor will be there. It makes it less difficult. The loneliness of his life has been filled up again, even if he misses Tina more than anything in the entire world. She hasn’t tried to repair their friendship, and he doesn’t know if he’d let her. Sometimes she talks to him and he bites back with an angry remark, bitter and resentful for her abandoning him.

He doesn’t blame her, but he hasn’t forgiven her, either.

She used to be the one that helped him through the days, and him and Connor are able to have the same kind of reliance with each other during work that they do at his place. He feels safe inside the walls of his apartment and he feels safe being in a public place with Connor--even if he knows Connor would never hurt him, at least the presence of a dozen other people means that it wouldn’t happen.

Or maybe it would. Maybe everyone else is craving to see someone beat him to death in the middle of the DPD, and he’d likely be thankful for that. Bleed out and never bother anyone else again. Except it would make a mess, wouldn’t it? And they’d have to clean it up, and it would be his final act of annoyance amongst them all. Always better to go the route of poisoning. Carrying a body away is easier than scrapping blood and guts and gore off tile.

It doesn’t matter. It won’t happen. Work isn’t the worst part of his life now, either. Connor has seemingly healed that part of his life. Not quite  _ healed _ , maybe. Just sutured together. Made it something that could stand on its own without falling apart. He doesn’t leave to smoke and he doesn’t hide in his car to scream and cry.

But the times after work, when he’s alone, when there’s nobody but the few strangers on the street as he makes his way to his car?

His heart races in his chest. His stomach turns. He can remember what it felt like to have his face pressed against concrete when he was twenty-three and barely holding himself together and didn’t bother to scream. The knife against his throat was unnecessary. He wouldn’t have said anything anyway.

  
  


“Gavin?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t have to,” Connor whispers, reaching out to him. Always reaching out to him. His hand is on his shirt, clutching the fabric. Trying to drag him closer but knowing Gavin can’t handle more than what they have. They get a little closer every night. A centimeter here and there. The gap between them isn’t as big as it used to be, and Connor never moves from his side, always lets Gavin be the one to move a little closer.

He’s too patient.

“I don’t have to?”

“I just--” Connor sighs. “I want to help you.”

And he doesn’t want to scare Connor away.

He has scared so many people away.

He probably should, he thinks. It would be better if Connor didn’t have to deal with this. He’s never going to be a happy person. He’s never going to be the type of person that can make Connor happy. There is always going to be nights like these when he has something on his mind that is weighing him down and will weigh Connor down, too. It doesn’t matter if he says it out loud. Connor will see it, he will feel it, he’ll know.

“Please don’t shut me out. You don’t have to tell me everything--”

“But you want me to tell you something.”

“I want you to tell me what happened. It doesn’t have to be descriptive. Just...”

Just the name of it. Just admit what it was.

He can feel tears in his eyes and he’s grateful for the dark to help shadow it away. Hide some of his pain from Connor, since he clearly can’t manage it anymore.

“I was attacked.”

“Gavin…”

“That’s all.”

He looks up to meet Connor’s gaze and knows that Connor knows. He doesn’t know how much and he doesn’t know what specifically, but he knows when Connor was tormented by seeing the attack replayed again and again, it was more than Gavin had previously thought he’d seen.

What was it that he saw?

The bruises on his wrists, shaped like hands, when they were held over his head so he couldn’t fight against the person trying to undo his belt buckle? Was it something he didn’t know androids could see, like fibers or markings that would indicate where a pillow was pressed over his face to keep him from screaming, as if he had even tried? He had cried, and that was it. Silent as he tried to kick the man away. That was all he did. He never said no.

He never said no.

He had asked for it, almost. Asked to be slapped and the slap had turned into something else. He just didn’t want to be choked, and when he had tried to pull the hands away, they had gotten greedy and angry and--

_ He never said no. _

“Gavin--”

“I’m tired, Connor,” he whispers. “Can I go to sleep?”

Connor nods, and the conversation drops. The two enter into a deep silence, only punctuated by the sounds of breathing and Gavin’s heartbeat, which he thinks is so loud that Connor must be able to hear it.

  
  


Gavin never called it rape.

It didn’t matter when it happened. When he was a kid and his brother’s friend wanted to  _ practice kissing  _ and he had agreed to it, because he thought it was normal, even when it turned into something else. Even when he was crying and asking him to stop because it hurt. It wasn’t until he mentioned something to his brother that he realized something was wrong, because a few hours later, police were at the door asking why Eli had beaten a kid in his neighborhood nearly to death.

Lucky they had money to make the situation go away.

Gavin was grateful that Eli never mentioned it. Like he wanted to forget as much as Gavin did.

He wondered, though, what Eli would have done if he had known years and years later, after Eli left for his prestigious university and Gavin was on his own, someone else did something similar, too. Waking up in a strange bed and his head aching and the night before blurry and unknown. He wonders if Eli would have even believed him, since it was a girl in the bed beside him, a year younger than him and known as a prude among her peers.

He didn’t know it was her, either, except when she’d woken up she smiled at him and called him her boyfriend.

Only once did he actually try to scream for help, when he was in college and it was a frat boy that made fun of him for kissing a boy at a party and found him by himself later in the night, shoving fingers down his throat to keep him quiet. He had said no then, told him to fuck off, tried to get out of it. But Gavin is very easily reduced to whimpering, to quiet pleading, to nothing else than tears and hoping that’s enough to get someone to stop.

It never is.

Gavin can still taste the dirty sock shoved into his mouth to shut him up, and he can still feel the hand around his throat when it was done with and the back of his head was slammed into a wall in a threat to keep him quiet on the subject.

Of course he wouldn’t say anything.

He never did.

Not when he was twelve and not when he was sixteen and not when he was twenty.

Not when he was twenty-three and started seeking out violence as a way to fill the void that had been carved into his chest, wide as a canyon. Desperate to feel something.

And he doesn’t count any of the times after that, when people didn’t listen to him when he told them to stop or when he said no, because he flirted with them to begin with. He came onto them first. It didn’t matter. Gavin initiated the sex, he brought them back to his place most of the times it happened.

And they were always better than him at keeping his hands tied up and his legs apart and it didn’t matter if he screamed because the neighbors were used to the sounds anyways and probably couldn’t distinguish it, so he more often resided himself to silent tears as whoever above him or behind him kept his legs from kicking and his hands from scratching.

He doesn’t call it rape because he stopped saying no and he stopped fighting. He gave up every time. Let himself be used like a sex doll since he knew that was all he was good for anyway.

And most of the time, if he stopped, they wouldn’t hit him quite so hard.

It’s funny, though--

_ Most of the time. _

Most of the time isn’t an  _ always.  _ It isn’t a guarantee. And sometimes he refuses to let them do things and he can’t stop himself from fighting back. Or they’ll ask him to call them  _ daddy  _ or something that drops in the pit of his stomach as a word he’ll never unhear in that tone of voice as they slap him in an effort to get him to spit the word out the way they want him to.

He can’t tell Connor this, because he told Tina and she tried her best not to look horrified and tried her best not to pretend that it didn’t ruin their friendship, but it did. They don’t talk anymore. He doesn’t want to lose Connor like that, and he doesn’t want to kiss Connor when the only times he can remember ever being kissed were roughly, with teeth biting onto his lips and blood in his mouth.

  
  


“Hold still, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Close your eyes.”

“They’re closed,” Connor says, laughing a little. “I promise.”

Gavin smiles, reaching up and tying the blindfold around his eyes. He trusts Connor, but it’s better this way. More secure. Last line of defense.

He doesn’t really have a plan for this, if it backfires. They’ve worked their way past not touching at all to only holding hands to this. He can let Connor’s arms fall around his waist in the morning, to pull him close at night. Not as close as Gavin wants, because any closer makes him realize how far he wants to be away. A push and pull of trauma and need.

His plan was to kiss Connor. He thought blindfolding him like this, it would be a nice surprise. He’s already so close to him, there’s already a hand on his waist trying to keep him from leaving, although if Gavin really tried, it would disappear immediately.

Connor is exceptional in that matter. Cautious and patient in a way that it helps him not have to worry about whether or not Connor will listen if he tells him to stop. He’s always a step ahead of Gavin. Sometimes it makes him annoyed, because he thinks maybe he just needs to be desensitized to being around someone. He isn’t fragile. He won’t break if Connor holds onto him a little tighter than he does.

“Gavin?”

He leans further in, face close to Connor’s, lips inches apart. He could kiss him. He  _ wants  _ to kiss him.

He wants Connor to be the one that kisses him because he’s frozen here, an inch away, unable to lean a little closer.

He thought he was ready. He thought it was okay. It’d been weeks of mentally preparing himself and he couldn’t.

“H-Happy birthday, Connor,” he says quietly, pulling away. His hands move from Connor’s head, down his arms, taking his hands in his and pulling him back along the kitchen, towards the bedroom. Careful steps backward until he hits the door, pushing it open with his hand. “You can open your eyes now.”

Connor lifts his hands up, undoing the unnecessary blindfold, letting it drop around his neck.

“Gavin…”

“The cat is shared custody,” Gavin says quickly. “Not just yours.”

“And her name?” Connor smiles, walking towards the bed, picking the cat up off the mattress. Tiny and black, a little kitten that looks less than a few weeks old. She’s just a runt, Gavin knows that. He checked in on her and her home in the laundromat a few blocks away almost every chance he got.

“I thought I’d let you pick, but I like Mocha.”

“Mocha is good,” Connor replies, and he’s smiling back at Gavin, and he thinks it’s the first time he ever earned a smile like that properly. He turns, holding the cat carefully in one hand as she curls up against his shoulder, seemingly too tired to be awake, even with the added excitement of a new person. His hands trail over where the cat was laying a few seconds ago. A collection of six ties carefully resting at the end of the bed.

“I didn’t know what to get you,” Gavin says quietly, suddenly feeling stupid and idiotic for ever picking out ties to begin with. A few with patterns, subtle and professional. A few more vibrant and bright, matching the shirts that sometimes Connor steals from Hank on their laundry days.

“I love them,” he says, looking towards Gavin again. His hand moves from the ties and stretches out to him, reaching for him. “Can you come here?”

Gavin obliges, moving across the room, taking Connor’s hand, which tugs him close against Connor’s body. As close as Connor will push to get, but Gavin leans in, resting his head against Connor’s shoulder, jealous of the cat and her comfort where she sleeps.

“Gav?”

“Hm?”

“I do… love… them,” he says, words falling off like strange segmented pieces, and he knows what Connor is saying.

That he loves him.

That he loves Gavin.

_ What a stupid boy _ , Gavin thinks with a soft smile forming on his face.

  
  


“Can I show you something?” Connor asks quietly. “I feel--I feel like I should.”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

“Can you turn the lights off?”

Gavin nods, leaving the bed, turning the switch off, sending them into darkness earlier than they usually would. When he makes his way back to the bed, Connor is pulling the blankets around his body, hiding most of it.

“Con?”

“One second,” he whispers.

His hand comes up shaking and hesitant to the side of his head, touching lightly against the LED and the skin pulls away slowly. Almost like it knows how much Connor doesn’t want to do this.

“Con, you don’t have to--”

“I want to,” he says. “I do.”

He doesn’t understand why, and he doesn’t press. He doesn’t want to make Connor feel worse about this. It’s something important to him, something Gavin might never really understand. But he does get it in some semblance of the matter. The literal pulling back of one's skin to show the true self underneath. Gavin doesn’t need to see the white plastic to know Connor is a good person, that Gavin cares about him more than anything else.

“Con?”

“I’m not going to strip for you,” Connor says, and his tone is a forced joke. Shaking on the syllables but trying its hardest to be humorous, to break the tension. It fails. “This is all you get.”

“Okay,” he whispers.

They sit in the silence for a moment. Connor staring into the dark shadows that are cast in the folds and creases of the blanket. Gavin watching him, looking maybe too closely at the way his body was put together. The different pieces and plates and the way they curved around his skull.

“Can I ask you something?”

Connor nods silently, not looking back to him.

“Wh...What does it feel like? Having it gone like that?”

“Exposed,” Connor says quietly. “I don’t know… how to describe it in human terms.”

“Do you want to try? It doesn't have to make sense."

He nods slowly and he’s silent for a long time. Quiet long enough for Gavin to move closer to him, to reach out and rest his hand on top of Connor’s on the bed, the other one reaching up to his face, holding it gently. His thumb moves across his cheek, brushing away a tear that’s escaped.

“I-I think it’s like a bruise,” Connor says finally, leaning against Gavin’s hand, his face turns a little, his lips brushing his palm. An almost kiss. “Pressing down on it, maybe. Refreshing the pain. Or… like a layer of skin has been stripped back.”

He laughs a little at the end, and Gavin doesn’t know if he should laugh, too. But he can imagine what Connor is saying. Even if his shell is hard plastic, it is like the surface is tender and almost aches when it’s touched. He thinks about the healing wounds on his legs and his arms, how blisters would form and how much it would hurt when the skin pressed against something, even just the tiniest bit.

“It hurts,” Connor finally settles on. His hand raises to his chest, resting against the surface. “Here.”

Gavin moves his hand, following where Connor’s is, resting against his chest lightly. “Does it always hurt?”

Connor shrugs, looking away from his face, “Often enough. You hurt, too, right? That's why you cover up?”

_ Always,  _ he thinks.

“Yeah,” he says instead.

“Does it go away?”

He swallows, not wanting to say no. Not wanting to admit that every time his pain fades it is brought back fresh and awful and aching.

“Sometimes.”

Connor smiles a little, and it’s strange seeing the smile devoid of the skin, but it doesn't negate the charm of it. How quickly Gavin has grown to love that smile when before seeing it made him want to punch the android.

“Maybe I’ll show you more someday,” Connor says with a small laugh.

“You trust me?”

Connor nods, “To the moon and back.”

“I think that’s with love,” Gavin says quietly. “Not trust.”

“Why not both? To infinity and beyond.”

Gavin laughs, wishing he had the ability to lean forward and kiss him, because he wants to. And he would, if he could. He wishes he had already destroyed that wall between them so he could. But he settles instead for shifting a little closer to Connor’s side, pressing his face against Connor’s and nuzzling him. It feels stupid and silly, but it’s all he can do to show how much he loves him right now.

To the moon and back, to infinity and beyond.

  
  


He sets the cat carefully on a bed in the living room, where she looks up at him concerned and confused as he abandons her there, closing the door to his bedroom so he can be alone with the file and the lighter. He watches the flame as it licks around the edges of the metal until he can see it turn black and steam or smoke rising off of it. He’s never sure which. He doesn’t care enough.

If he pressed this to his skin right now, it would likely result in a third-degree burn. He has a few of those across his body, when things get really bad or when he isn’t paying attention enough to take the fire away or let the blade cool off enough to not cause more damage than necessary.

He’s been in this situation a few times. Times when Connor isn’t here or isn’t staying the night and he is alone enough that he can feel the desire to do this again. He never really felt like he was addicted to it, like he’s heard people describe self-harming as, but sometimes the weeks pass by and it feels like there is a necessity to add to his collection of scars.

There are a few times when he closes the nightstand drawer, putting the pouch away where it was before, and not giving in. There are other times when he is about to do it and he changes his mind, letting the blade cool off before placing it back in its home again. There are times when he has it just above his skin and he hears the phone ring and he gets distracted long enough that the need is gone again.

But there are times like this when even a late-night phone call from Connor wouldn’t be able to stop him, and he presses it down against his thigh in the only spot on the left side that’s free enough for it to be added and he winces at the sting of it. It always hurts, and he always knows the pain is near unbearable, but he forgets more often than not of how bad it  _ really _ is. It’s impossible to steel himself for it, falling prey to the pain every time.

That’s why it always works.

  
  


“Gavin…” Connor says, saying his name like he always does when he’s about to follow it with a question that can shift a conversation and slide it unwilling and terribly down into something dark and deep. “I know I asked you before, but--”

“But?”

Connor sets down the grocery bags onto the counter. Gavin hates shopping. He hates trying to pick perfect fruits and vegetables--he’d eaten entirely frozen and canned things if it weren’t for Connor helping him through the process. It’s the only time he enjoys being at the store.

“You can say no,” Connor says, prefacing his question. “But I’d like too--I want to…”

“What?”

“Kiss you," Connor mumbles.

Gavin smiles a little, but he feels guilty for a moment that he can’t say yes right away, that they have spent months in this strange version of their relationship where they know their feelings are romantic and they treat each other as such on all levels except physical.

“Cut the onion first,” Gavin says. “Then we’ll talk.”

“Oh?”

“It’s not a promise, Con.”

“Okay,” Connor says. “Even if it was, I’d let you break it.”

He’s too nice. Too understanding. Too soft. He teases Gavin, but never about this.

He gets distracted from peeling potatoes, watching Connor carefully slice the onion into perfectly proportioned pieces, faster than Gavin could ever hope to aspire to. He likes cooking, but he’s never been good at cutting things properly. Tomatoes always come out wonky, potatoes always in a dozen different sizes. He likes bell peppers--it’s the easiest. He adds them to foods for no other reason than because they’re nice to cut down into small chunks and the red and orange and yellow are so bright and pleasing to the eye.

“Done,” Connor says, swiping the onions into a bowl, setting them aside for later. “You have another job for me?”

“Y-Yeah,” Gavin stumbles, stuttering over his words. “Lettuce.”

“Okay.”

  
  


They carry on like idiots. Gavin assigning Connor as many jobs as possible, taking an overly long time doing his own, trying to mentally prepare himself and decide whether or not he could actually kiss Connor. Connor doesn’t say anything, but he’s sure he notices the pattern. The way whenever their conversation shifts to anything not centered around cooking, Gavin’s voice snaps them back to it. A fact about bell peppers that he makes up on the spot, just to see whether or not Connor will believe it. He never does, but he laughs more often than not, and that helps.

God.

He doesn’t know what he did to deserve it, just to hear that laugh.

Gavin sets the food aside, moves the dishes to the sink where he’s already given Connor the task of washing them. He leans against the counter, pretending that he’ll help rinse and put them on the drying rack, but only ever moving to do his job when the sink gets too full. Connor’s stolen his gloves because he likes the look of the bright pink, which Gavin attributes to his lack of work, but he knows it isn’t true. Whether or not he’d be wearing his gloves doesn’t matter. He keeps doing the bare minimum, too busy watching the way Connor’s lips move when he talks. He has a habit of twisting his mouth when he comes to an awkward pause, when Gavin is a few seconds behind understanding the words and coming up with a reply.

And he’s just--

He’s so--

Fucking beautiful.

“Con,” he says quietly, moving forward. Connor’s hands slip off of a fork and it clatters to the bottom of the sink, moving out of the way so Gavin can get closer to him. Too close, he thinks, because Connor hasn’t moved far enough from the sink and he can feel the counter against his back, the water that splashed over and soaking into his shirt.

Connor doesn’t say anything, like Gavin is an animal that he might scare away, and he’s grateful for it. He thinks of Connor said anything, it would ruin it. He’s already moving in slow motion when he leans up on tip-toes, too short to kiss him as quickly as he preferred. Too much time to rethink this, too much time for that feeling he always gets to show up again. But it doesn’t. Nothing surfaces except for the normal fear of kissing another person, and then his lips are against Connor’s. Softly, at first. A small kiss that he barely breaks only to start again, a little more confident.

He knows it isn’t a barrier that’s going to be broken. One kiss isn’t going to suddenly make him capable of kissing Connor whenever he wants. He’ll still have the problem, he’ll still struggle to get over the last hurdle.

But he is kissing him now, and Connor’s hand is on his waist. The wetness of the rubber glove turning his shirt wet and he can hear it squeak against itself when the hand clutches the fabric, and suddenly he’s laughing because it’s such a stupid sound and he’s like a child and god--

He’s happy.

For a moment, he forgets everything bad in the world and his life and he’s happy and laughing and Connor is smiling and chasing Gavin down for another kiss and Gavin can let him because everything is okay and there’s a promise within it all that everything is going to be  _ okay _ .

  
  


“Can I call you my boyfriend?” Connor asks quietly.

Gavin nods, looking up to him in the dark. Connor likes to lean over him like this, trace the shape of his face. He thinks Connor must do the same thing he does. Staring into those eyes, trying to memorize all the little details of his face. The freckles and the moles and the programmed imperfections. He has a beautiful face. Gavin thinks that’s another reason why he used to hate him. Nobody could hate someone with that face, but Gavin’s own? He’s aware of how punchable it is.

“You needed me to kiss you for that?” Gavin asks quietly.

“Yeah. I’m--Glad. You did.”

“Oh?”

“I was getting desperate. I might’ve had to start kissing your hand like it’s the 1800s.”

“You still could.”

“Do you want me to?” Connor asks, and Gavin smiles a little bit. He’s stupid with the day. The lightest one he’s had in years and he nods, slowly. Connor takes his hand, pressing a kiss against his fingertips, against his palm, against the back of it. Covering all his bases. “Gav?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

He’s going to cry, it’s only a matter of seconds, so he shoves the words out of his mouth before they can be tainted by the tears, “I love you, too.”

“To the moon and back?” Connor whispers.

“To infinity and beyond,” Gavin says, his voice cracking on the words, the tears overtaking them.

  
  


Love is stupid. The words mean so much but the inevitability of it falling away means more. This love is not going to last forever. Gavin knows that. He knows in the end he will mean nothing to Connor. He knows it is only a matter of time before they part ways and he doesn't know what he's going to do when Connor does that to him. It will crush him. The thought of it is crushing him now. He doesn't deal with heartbreak often--doesn't allow himself to even indulge in love to begin with because he knows it will end badly. Gavin isn't someone that people love. Connor is an idiot for thinking he does to begin with.

He’s a stubborn piece of shit. He knows that. If his relationship with Connor falls apart, he won’t ever let it repair itself again, not even a fraction of what it was before. He will end up hating Connor as vehemently as he hates his brother and hates Tina. He doesn’t know how to feel towards people when they abandon him, and he reacts with anger.

He knows it’s undeserving, but it doesn’t matter to him. He will not be the first to break the barrier and try and fix it. It might bottom out into a vague distaste like it is with Hank now, but it’ll never recover. He’ll never be friends with Tina again. He’ll never get Eli to be his brother. He’ll never get Connor back.

So he really, truly, doesn’t want to risk losing him.

  
  


“What are you doing?”

“Helping you with your tie.”

“You don’t know how to do it, though.”

“No,” Gavin says, holding onto the fabric, fingers moving across the soft diamond pattern set in the deep cerulean. One of the ties he picked out. Connor wears them the most, this one his favorite. “But I want to help.”

“Oh?”

He nods, pulling Connor down a little bit, kissing him gently. It might be all he has the emotional capacity for today. The kiss and the tie and the closeness right now. It’ll all disappear before lunch, he thinks. It’s not a great day for him. He only got out of bed because Connor was missing and he wanted to have him for a little while longer. He found him in the kitchen feeding the cat and he’d leaned against Connor’s back and nearly fell asleep standing there like that, arms wrapped around Connor’s waist.

He is getting better, he thinks. Recovering little by little. All of the bruises are long gone and nobody has touched him to revive the wounds again. The damage still exists. He knows it will be a long time before he will ever let Connor look at him without every inch of his body covered.

Summer was like suffering in his apartment. Too hot for the long sleeved shirts and the pants, but he managed it. Didn’t sleep with a blanket and kept the fans pointed at him. Loud and humming in the distance. It’s moved onto fall now, the window always cracked to let the cool breeze into the apartment. It’s getting too cold for that. His birthday has long passed, quiet and uncelebrated. He knows Connor was aware of it and he knows Connor knows he didn’t want to comment on it at all beyond putting shitty bat shaped decorations on the walls in preparation for Halloween. It’s the only good thing about October in his life. Scary movies and bite sized candies.

“Gavin, are you okay?”

“Fine,” he whispers, but he wants to crawl back into the bed. He wants to lay there for another few hours. He wants to close his eyes and enter the dream state where time will pass him by and he can continue his life without really living it. It’s too much work to live it. “Need some coffee.”

Connor presses a hand against his forehead, feeling for a temperature. Gavin watches his face shift into worry when he realizes there is none. That the illness isn’t something physical. When is it ever? He thinks Connor would be relieved if it were. Gavin might actually get help for it. He might actually get better.

“Coffee,” Connor agrees quietly. “Okay.”

  
  


He’s only afforded happiness for approximately a week before the months crush down into unhappiness. There was a time in his life when he had a year and it made up for the decades before it of feeling so utterly awful that it was almost like a reward for not killing himself. Now it’s more predictable. One day a week he’ll be happy and fine and he will be able to kiss Connor a dozen times and he will even think about how it might be possible one day for more.

But the six days in between can range from feeling nothing to wishing he could feel nothing. He tries to be patient. Waiting every day in hopes that it will be the good one of the week. Hoping he can make another leap forward, hoping that it can roll into two days or happen sooner than he thinks it will.

It never does.

  
  


Gavin isn’t very good at trying to be a better person, but he can slide little things into his life that he thinks he can manage. Helping Connor with his tie. Helping someone with their paperwork. Not being as cruel as he was before. Letting things go. It doesn’t really work all the time, but it’s something, and it is better than nothing.

  
  


“Do I live with you?” Connor asks.

“W-What?”

“I’m always here. We have shared custody of a cat. We’re dads together, but I don’t think I necessarily live with you.”

Gavin smiles a little, “All your stuff isn’t here.”

“No. It should be. I’ll bring some boxes over.”

Gavin pauses, hands moving away from the puzzle pieces in front of him, glancing up to Connor’s face, “Y-You really want to live with me, then?”

“It’d be easier.”

“Connor,” he says carefully. “Do you  _ want  _ to live with me?”

“Yes.”

“Not because it would be easier?”

Connor sets a piece down, a corner for the outline of the puzzle. It hits the table with a loud  _ snap. _ “No. Because I want to be with you.”

“Okay,” Gavin says, biting his lower lip. “I’ll get you a key.”

  
  


It doesn’t change anything. Connor was almost always at his place anyway. There were only a few rare nights when he was gone, and it was usually due to work, and then usually due to not wanting to wake Gavin up by knocking on his door too late in the night.

He should’ve had a key earlier. Gavin almost likes it. The half-awake state of him leaving a dream and turning from the empty space of the bed and into Connor’s arms when he gets home.  _ Home.  _ He likes the sound of it. Their home. Their place. Them. They are a true pair now. Beyond the amusing label of  _ boyfriend  _ which he always attributed to the stupidity of high school and college days and into something more solid.

Gavin never cared about marriage before, but he thinks about it constantly now. He just wants Connor to be properly his. He wants those stupid months of calling him a fiance and he wants the years and years of saying he’s his husband. He wants it. He wants to have Connor forever.

He won’t, but it’s nice to think about.

  
  


“Gavin?”

“Go back to sleep,” he says quietly, climbing into the bed beside him. It’s nearly five in the morning. They’ll have to get up soon. Gavin fell asleep at his desk looking at files. All of that caffeine crashing out into something he could barely fight long enough to get home.

“Wait,” Connor whispers, and Gavin thinks his voice is shaking. “I missed you. I didn’t get to talk to you today.”

“I’m sure it was a blessing in disguise,” Gavin replies, an arm curling around Connor’s waist. “Get some rest, okay?”

“I already slept. Gavin--”

“Tomorrow,” he says quietly. “Please?”

“Okay. Tomorrow. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he whispers back, pressing a kiss against Connor’s shoulder. “To the moon and back, yeah?”

“Infinity and beyond,” Connor replies.

  
  


Gavin forgets to ask him what he wanted to talk about. The morning is filled with coffee and bleary eyes and being too tired to move. Connor practically dresses him, tossing clothes his way and helping pull the shirt up over his head after asking Gavin, exhausted with eyes barely open, if it was okay a hundred times over. Gavin is too tired to think about Connor’s fingers trailing along his forearms. Both of them having lost their free space of skin a long time ago. Just a collection of rectangular and circular scars now.

He thinks, in a few hours, Connor will probably tell him that they need to talk about it. He’ll use their shared free time to ask Gavin if he’s okay, and he’ll say yes, of course he is. Why wouldn’t he be? Everything is okay now. It’s better. He’s working on it. He tossed the lighter and the nail file the day before Connor officially moved in, and despite his weakness and despite his craving, he never replaced the objects and he never gave into using something else. He doesn’t even smoke anymore. Connor is a good influence on his life.

But the conversation doesn’t come. Connor leaves to go investigate a crime scene and Hank comes back alone, saying that Connor was chasing down a lead on his own. It isn’t an uncommon thing, but Gavin misses his presence in the DPD. He always does when Connor is gone.

Instead, he leans on his hand and tugs the sleeve of his shirt a little further up so they cover his hands and he busies himself with his work, waiting and waiting for Connor to come back.

  
  


“Hey,” Connor’s voice is quiet over the phone. “How are you?”

“Tired. Where are you?”

“Chasing down leads. Hank didn’t think they were promising enough to come with. I’m going to be home late, okay?”

“Okay,” Gavin replies. “You’ve been gone all day. Shouldn’t you give it a rest?”

Connor laughs a little, but there’s something wrong about it, “Probably. I’m going to call Hank and have him meet me at the next place. Traffic is terrible. I’m sorry, Gav. After this I’ll come home.”

“Good,” he says quietly. “I miss you.”

“Blessing in disguise,” Connor says quietly. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“Absence makes the heart lonely,” Gavin replies, and he doesn't know what he’s talking about, but his tone is a little bitter. More than he intended. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. To the moon and back.”

“Infinity and beyond,” he says. There’s a moment of silence where he thinks he can imagine Connor smiling on the other end of the line before their final goodbyes are passed between them and the phone line clicks to dead silence.

  
  


His bed is empty and cold without Connor in it. It always is when he’s working late. Gavin stays awake longer than he intends, laying on his side and swiping through the different apps on his phone until none of them offer enough amusement to keep his eyes open, and they slip closed in the dark and he dreams and sleeps and waits for Connor to appear beside him.

  
  


“Do you remember the last time you were happy?”

“No,” he says, and it’s a lie.

He remembers.

It was seven months ago.

He doesn’t remember the specifics of it, but he remembers Connor laughing, he remembers Connor leaning towards him and kissing him. He remembers the two of them dancing in the tiny cramped kitchen like the couples do in the movies and it was cheesy but he was happy. He doesn’t think he’s ever been that happy since.

But Gavin’s answer remains a no, because he doesn’t want to have to say these things out loud to someone. He will break, and he is tired of breaking these days.

  
  


Connor died alone choking on his own blood, even though that wasn’t what killed him. There was Thirium filling up his mouth, spilling over until there wasn’t a drop left in his body. A slash across his throat and gunshot wounds in his legs and arms, paralyzing the movements of them. He bled out on the ground like that while somebody took the energy and the time to carve into his chest  _ ANDROID KILLER  _ and write  _ PAYBACK IS A BITCH  _ in blood on the wall with the Thirium on their fingertips. The bullets weren’t put in his head until after he was completely dead, they told him. Just to make sure that everything in Connor’s memory, every file and every piece of himself, was so corrupted it couldn’t be recovered again.

Gavin doesn’t really care if they catch who did it. Whatever punishment they get won’t be enough, and he is used to people that have hurt him and the people he loves getting away with it long after they’re dead and lived their own happy lives.

It’s not even like he’ll be alive to see it anyway. He managed a solid seven months with Connor. Trying his best to keep living and failing every time. Tina tried to talk to him a few times, but he didn’t let anything change. Connor’s death shouldn’t be the catalyst to getting his friend back. He wanted them both. He didn’t want one or the other.

He thinks about how he never told Connor what happened. He thinks about how Tina will never be his best friend again. He thinks about Connor’s death and how it is the final nail in the coffin. The last thing that will break him into something irreparable. He will never recover from this. Why bother trying?

Gavin nestles his gun underneath his chin, knowing that if Connor was here, he would try to stop him. He tried a hundred times before, maybe unknowingly in his actions, and he was always so good at making the thoughts a little quiet.

But he isn’t here anymore and they’re so loud he can’t hear anything else. He just wants it to be quiet, so he pulls the trigger and lets the silence flood in.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> connor's side of things. .. and some extra scenes

Connor doesn’t have fond memories of the DPD. He doesn’t associate it with good things. He remembers the pain and the agony of his time as a machine and he didn’t look forward to going back until Tina extended a hand and helped him through the process. Hank helped, too, of course--Connor would be remiss if he tried to pretend that Hank didn’t play a vital role in him accepting his life at the DPD again. But it didn't make it easy coming back to work after the revolution.  Which, he thinks, he only did because it felt like where he was supposed to be. Even if he failed before. That thought always comes back again and again. Connor failed at what he was designed to do. He solved crimes, sometimes, but he never was quite perfect in what CyberLife wanted. He helped, but he was never good enough at what he did.

He doesn’t think he will ever be good enough.

  
  


It is stupid to torment himself about it, but he does, all the time. When Connor is alone at night and when he’s left by himself in the DPD, everyone gone on cases and him stranded and lost with nothing to do, his thoughts wander to all the things he did wrong, all the things he could’ve done right.

Connor doesn’t quite know why he hates himself for something like this, but he does.  He always finds a way to hate himself for something, and he is in a constant war with this.

He hurt people, he hurt so many people, but he also didn’t do enough. He wasn’t good enough to save a little girl and he wasn’t good enough to stop the revolution. It’s not as if he would ever want to go back to being a machine, it’s not like now he doesn’t think he deserves rights, but he can’t help but think of how stupid and awful he was at the one thing he was meant to do.

And he struggles all the time. Failing at everything he was supposed to be good at. Whenever he gets a detail in a crime scene wrong, the information in his head providing a false answer, it feels like another stab that he is disposable, he is worthless.

He doesn’t know how to fix it. He doesn’t know if he  _ can  _ fix it.

  
  


Connor has enough hate inside of himself to live off of for centuries. He has enough thoughts that will never go away. He has enough reminders that he is bad at his job, that he doesn’t provide as much support to Hank as he should in his time of need. He can torture himself with an endless list of details that make him hate himself more and more.

So really, he thinks, he doesn’t need Gavin to hate him, too.  Not that he blames him. He would hate someone if they came in and took his job away, too. He would hate being presented with the cold reality of how replaceable he really is.

He comes over to Gavin’s desk one morning, leaning against it, a stack of files held tight against his chest like a shield he can cling to, “Why do you hate me so much?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Gavin replies, barely looking at him. “Get off my desk. I have work to do.”

He doesn’t want to go. He wants an answer. He needs one. How many times has his own thoughts started to fail him recently, giving him facts that simply aren’t true? He needs something real, he needs something he can believe.

“You  _ do  _ know,” he says. “Tell me, or I’m never going to leave.”

Gavin is silent for a long time, and Connor wonders if there is absolutely nothing that can be done to fix this hatred between them. A war fueled by the simple fact that he was manufactured at a company, pieced together with Thirium and metal and plastic. If it really could just boil down to that and nothing else. If Gavin could really hate him for such a tiny but vast reason.

If it is something he can change, he’ll do his best to fix it. He doesn’t want to be the person he was before. He doesn’t want to be ruthless and cruel. He doesn’t want to tear someone’s life apart and think nothing of it. He wants to be a positive presence, he wants to be kind and generous and do what he can to make up for what he’s done.

But Gavin isn’t answering him, which is telling him that the reason really is as simple as the fact that his inner workings are mechanical instead of natural.

“You don’t like androids,” he says quietly. “Why?”

_ Why,  _ he asks, so he can try and fix that. Do what he can to smooth the damage over. He doesn’t need Gavin to like him, he just can’t stand the suffering of being hated by someone. It is too crushing of a weight, and he is trying his hardest, he is always trying his best to be better and if it doesn’t matter in the end, he doesn’t know what to do.

“There’s not some deep fucking story,” he says. “Just tired of them. Fucking everywhere. Taking jobs. Doing nothing.  _ Get off my desk.” _

_ Everywhere.  _ Connor wonders briefly how possible it would be to rid the city of enough androids that Gavin isn’t given the weight of seeing them constantly, but even then, how stupid would that be? It wouldn’t solve anything. He thinks Gavin would still hate him.

Connor shifts a little closer, “And me, specifically?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“The truth.”

“You’re a piece of shit,” he says, reaching forward and pushing Connor towards the edge of the desk. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

He isn’t wrong. It feels like he baited himself into this and he should’ve been prepared for such a cruel answer--any answer, really--but he thought he could’ve handled it. He doesn’t know why he did. Maybe because he so constantly tells himself what a horrible person he is, that he could handle someone throwing those words at him.

But he can’t.

Connor stands, moving away. “Okay.”

He doesn’t want to run away, but he can’t help how fast his feet move to get him somewhere quiet and alone so he can try and get rid of the feelings stuffed inside of his chest. As if he could pull them away from the mechanisms inside, like cotton candy. Stuck everywhere, burnt there forever. He doesn’t think he will ever free himself from this.

  
  


In the dreams, it is always exactly like it was in reality. A little girl and an android falling to their deaths over the ledge of a building. Hitting the ground below, so far that he couldn’t hear the sound but he knew what it would be like. When he left, he passed by their bodies on his way back to CyberLife. Red and blue mixing on the concrete.

Dead. Destroyed. Nothing left behind. 

His fault.

Always his fault.

  
  


He heard about androids turning off their ability to cry. Shutting off the function to free themselves of the tears. He had heard about how bad of an idea it was because tears and crying where a release of emotion that helped deal with the feelings and the thoughts left inside, even if it could never hope to rid the android of them entirely.

Connor knows that it will have side effects, but he does it anyway.  He doesn’t want to cry anymore, and this is the closest he will get to feeling numb. Shutting it out slowly, letting the tears stop one by one until there is nothing left.

The feeling is still there--the deep desire to start crying. He can’t. He even tries, just to test to see if it works, but nothing comes out but broken noises that do little to help ease the feeling inside. But it is nice not to cry. He would rather feel this than have the weakness showed to others. He wants to be stronger than that, and he thinks this is the first step. It is the only thing he can think of to stop it, at least, and he will take that over anything else.

  
  


“Do you know why Gavin hates androids?” Connor asks. He knows it’s a risky question, but it has been something that’s bothered him for nearly a year now. He’s looked up a hundred different forums and websites based on anti-android rhetoric, but none of the things seem to properly align with who he sees Gavin as.

Which, he thinks, is probably just stupid and the requirement of needing an answer from the source than from people angry and bitter that they don’t have a machine to fuck or a child to take care of without consequences or responsibility.

Tina is his best option in this, and she looks at him like she doesn’t want to say anything. Like she’s surprised, almost offended that Connor would ask her this. And he feels stupid for it, too.

“He was my friend, Con,” she says. “I don’t want to talk about him behind his back.”

_ Was. _

He doesn’t know why they stopped talking. He saw them together constantly. When both of them were at the DPD, they were right by each other’s sides, never parting. He thought they were dating for the longest time. He thought, when Tina started to get friendly with him, that they’d broken up.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I just--”

“I know,” Tina says. “I just can’t answer you. I’m sorry, too. I’ve already lost so much of him, Con, if he found out he’d never speak to me again.”

Connor doesn’t want to say that he thinks they have crossed that line, but he doesn’t press. He understands what a fragile friendship is like. He’s almost lost Hank a hundred times in the few months after the revolution. Rehab and therapy wasn’t easy for him. It still isn’t. Hank still has days where he looks at Connor like he’s an insect he’s waiting to crush and destroy.

Sometimes he wishes Hank would. He thinks it would be easier for the both of them.

Sometimes, Connor wants to run away and never come back to the DPD. Not just abandoning the job, but the people too. There is so much history here. He didn’t even work there for long, but he feels like he has burned a thousand bridges and is incapable of repairing every single one.

  
  


He knows humans experience the sensation, but he wonders if it’s the same for him. Jolting awake from sleep, feeling like he is falling despite the bed underneath him. Connor clings onto the sheets, still feeling like his body is floating through the air, never making impact with the ground. Just falling and falling and falling.

He wonders if anything will ever ground him again.

  
  


Gavin comes into work looking as though someone beat him to a bloody pulp. There are cuts on his face stitched together, a cut in his bottom lip, bruises forming on his cheeks, under his eyes. He walks almost with a limp. Slowly and hunched over, stopping to lean against the wall twice before making it to his desk. It isn’t even that far from the door, but it still takes him ten minutes to make it to his seat.

And Connor feels like he is falling again. He doesn’t know why it affects him like this. Seeing someone so destroyed like that. Sometimes, in moments like these or in moments with his cases, he wonders if he’s too empathetic to have a job like this, and then he wonders how he could ever consider himself empathetic when he shot an android for no other reason than needing information from Kamski that he thinks maybe, if he tried, he could’ve scraped from Kamski if he’d tried a little harder.

But he didn’t.

And know he’s staring at Gavin, looking bloody and broken and like he is constantly on the verge of crying.  Connor follows him to the break room the first chance he gets, when it’s a little empty and Gavin is leaning against the counter and waiting on his first cup of coffee for the day.

“What happened?” Connor asks, keeping his voice low, trying to keep this conversation as private as he thinks the two of them will ever be able to have in such an open space.

“Nothing,” he whispers, but his voice is hoarse. “I’m fine.”

“Gavin--” he starts, but Gavin is already pushing him back, walking away from him, leaving the coffee behind on the countertop.

“No offense, Connor, but I don’t have time for your fake concern.”

It’s not fake. It’s real. He doesn’t know how to get that across. He never knows how to get it across, especially with someone like Gavin, someone who probably doesn’t believe deviants feelings are real to begin with. He keeps trying and keeps trying to prove that he feels even if he desperately wishes he couldn’t.

He wonders for a moment if there’s a way to go back. Not to a cruel monster, but not to feel so heavily. If there is a dial in the back of his head like a volume control and he can turn it down, just a little, just enough to breathe.

He knows there isn’t, but he craves for one anyway.

  
  


Gavin won’t tell him what happened, but Connor knows he can figure it out. He’s equipped with the ability to.

It feels like an invasion of privacy, but when he’s home alone, sitting on his bed in the dark, he closes his eyes and recalls the image of Gavin’s face from today and he analyzes it to the best of his capabilities. The way Gavin walked, the way he hugged his side, the cuts on his face. Every bit and piece that he can grasp onto.

It is--

_ Horrifying _ .

And he regrets it in an instant.

But he can’t get it to stop. It just keeps playing. A vase smashed over the side of Gavin’s face, leaving cuts and scrapes behind from the broken shards. Adding scars like family members to the one across his nose. And the more he thinks about it, the more detail that’s fleshed out. The blood smears, the lack expression, the way Gavin gives up when someone punches him. The way his hands are held up above his head, pinned there hard enough to leave bruises.

He wants it to stop, but he can’t get it to stop. It just keeps going and he wants to scream and he wants to cry and he is caught in this moment of holding everything in and never letting it out and he’s terrified of what would happen right now if he could give in to the tears because he thinks he would scream with them.

  
  


Gavin needs help. He needed help before this, Connor thinks. He was just too selfish to see it. But he can notice the little things. The way Gavin disappears during work with the smoke breaks and the witnesses that don’t need to be reinterviewed yet. Connor can see the way the world is holding him down and the way Gavin bites back with more and more anger, like nothing is ever going to stop him from being this cruel, that he can prove how easy it is to have room for more anger and more hate.

Connor didn’t realize until now and he feels stupid for not noticing it. Or not doing anything about it. He should’ve done something about it. He should’ve offered more help to Hank before, too. He will never stop tormenting himself for that. He should’ve gone to Fowler when he heard that Hank was playing Russian roulette, when he knew about the suicidal tendencies and the alcoholism. He should’ve forced someone to get him help instead of letting him tag along with Connor on deviant cases.

He wonders how much it would’ve changed. Who would’ve worked with him instead.

Does it matter?

Hank would’ve started getting better faster. It didn’t matter where Connor was left in the end.

But he can help Gavin now, he thinks.

  
  


His apartment isn’t very far from the DPD. Connor walks there after work tonight, hands stuffed in his pockets, fingers turning the quarter over and over again, the other hand clasped around the list of names. He doesn’t think this will end well, but he doesn’t care if it does. He needs to help. He needs to do what he can. He is tired of not doing what he can.

When the door opens, there is a second of disbelief. Gavin staring back at him looking more exhausted than usual and Connor is overwhelmed with the pictures in his head again. Gavin laying back against a bed, pinned there, looking to tired to even bother fighting back.

How often does Connor see him go to the gym? How often does he hear about Tina saying it’s awkward that they no longer train together, but they still go at the same time every weekend? It isn’t that he expects Gavin to fight back just because he knows how to, it isn’t that Gavin could’ve won, it’s that Gavin didn’t try. It doesn’t negate this horrible thing that happened to him, but it feels like a rock in his stomach.

Gavin is just always giving up, and Connor wants him to fight. He wants Gavin to fight again. There isn’t the same attitude that Gavin had when Connor first arrived at the DPD, when he was giving out threats that it seemed like he would follow through on. Now he’s just cruel for the sake of being cruel.

“Connor?” he asks, leaning against the doorway. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I made a list,” he says quietly, holding out a piece of paper. “Of therapists in the city. I think… I think you should see one.”

He realizes how stupid he is now, when Gavin takes the paper from his hand, crumpling it into a ball fast and throwing it back at him. Connor watches where it lands, off to the side of the kitchen. He wonders if it’ll stay there. If Gavin will rethink this when he goes to pick it up and throw it away. If he’ll unfurl it from its crumpled state and read the interiors and change his mind.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” Gavin asks. “You think I want your help?”

No. Never. Not even for a split second. It’s almost amusing to him, how easy and truthful it would be to respond to that with it. It almost takes away how destroyed Gavin looks right now. Angry, with all of his energy focused on being as vicious as possible.

“No,” Connor says finally. “But I think you need it.”

“I don’t. You know what I need? I need for you to leave me the fuck alone.”

“Gavin--”

“Go. Away.”

He starts to close the door, but Connor reaches out, foot between the door and a hand on the edge of it, pushing it back. He’s stronger than Gavin. This takes such little effort, like a human plucking a book from a shelf.

“You shut everyone out,” Connor says, voice almost desperate and angry like Gavin’s is. “Just let me in. Just for a second.”

“I don’t need your help.”

Gavin’s grip on the door loosens, Connor winning out, pushing it the rest of the way open. He takes a step inside, reaching out to touch Gavin before pulling back sharply. The bruises are still fresh, he thinks. They’d still hurt, if Connor touched him, and he knows from how many victims he has been around how unwanted touches make everything worse. He doesn't want to make this worse, b ut all he wants to do is take Gavin’s hands in his and tell him he’s here for him, even though they aren’t friends, even though Gavin hates him more than anything in the world.

“I just want to be alone,” Gavin says softly. “Just let me be alone.”

He doesn’t think that’s true, he doesn’t think that’s ever been true. He watched both Gavin and Tina mutate into different people in these last six months. Gavin becoming closed off and more angry, Tina falling down a pit of silence every time his name was mentioned. He doesn’t know what happened. He doesn’t pretend to know. Tina didn’t tell him and he doesn’t think Gavin will ever say anything on the subject, either.

“Let me in, Gavin,” he whispers. “Please.”

“Why?”

His fingers curl into fists, tightening around themselves in an effort to gain control, “Just let me stay the night. I’ll leave in the morning.”

“You don’t trust me alone?”

It isn’t about trust. He doesn’t trust Gavin at all. The only thing he can rely Gavin on is being an asshole.

“I don’t think you should be alone, no,” Connor replies, because it is simpler than stating what he thinks, which is that he doesn’t believe Gavin is right. There is something wrong. It isn’t that he thinks Gavin is in threat of committing suicide tonight, but he doesn’t want to go, either. He doesn’t want Gavin to feel so alone in the world when his only friend has drifted away from him.

Gavin is silent for a long time, watching him, waiting. Taking in his appearance, looking back to the room behind him. There;s an angry sigh that falls from his lips when he meets Connor’s gaze again, “Give me a reason.”

“What?”

“Give me a reason you think I shouldn’t be alone.”

Connor racks his brain, finds a dozen that he could say. But he settles on one, on the truth that brought him here to begin with, despite his reluctance in saying it, in letting Gavin know how he pried into his life, invading his privacy. He felt like a watcher to the attack. A complicit bystander that did nothing, even though it was after the fact, which sometimes feels worse, when it is embedded in his head, playing on a loop. It feels like a stranger online, getting off to videos of people being degraded and torn apart and tormented.

“I can see it,” he says finally, his voice shaking on the words.

“What?”

“I can see it,” he says quietly. “On a loop, in my head. CyberLife wanted me to have the ability to… to reconstruct crime scenes. And it’s--it’s broken, I think. I don’t know. But I can see it. What happened to you. Parts of it on a loop.”

_ Parts of it,  _ he says, because he doesn’t want to admit that he sees nearly all of it. He might’ve been able to piece the entire thing together if it weren’t for how Gavin dresses. How Gavin  _ always  _ dresses. Long sleeves and baggy jackets. Covering up every inch of his skin as though he subscribes to a religion that preaches modesty.

“Okay,” he whispers. “Come in.”

  
  


Connor feels like a stalker, hanging out in the hallway, listening to the sounds of the shower start, of Gavin brushing his teeth. He feels like he shouldn’t be here as Gavin cleans up the dishes in the kitchen, the sounds of them clinking together as he makes a bed out of the couch in the living room. A few pillows, a blanket that Gavin pulled from the closet that was carefully folded and put away in a plastic bag.

When the lights turn off, Connor tiptoes as quietly as possible towards the windows, turning the blinds so that the street lights flood in, lighting the living room up enough that the darkness doesn’t feel so threatening.

He can’t handle the dark anymore. It reminds him too much of the in-between state of dying, of being presented with the question of whether or not his death meant he was alive to begin with.

Connor considers himself alive now, even if he resents the idea of it sometimes.

Being alive is so much effort, so much work. There were so many things he didn’t have to think about before that feel like they are crushing him now. And even if there isn’t the threat of CyberLife deactivating him and turning him into scraps, there is still the thought that if he messes something up, nobody will ever get over what a disappointment he is. He is always disappointing people. He doesn’t know why he bothers trying sometimes.

  
  


Connor does, eventually, fall asleep, but it doesn’t last long.

He remembers dying for the first time. Slipping off the edge of a building, his fingers not getting a good enough grasp on the window as he thought he did. He remembers floating through the air, thinking of Daniel and Emma and how their bodies looked crushed and broken on the sidewalk. The fall for him isn’t as long, and it doesn’t provide as much respite.  He is still alive for a long ten minutes after he hits the ground. Connor's body broken and bleeding, his eyes stuck on the clouds and the sun above him. His memory was uploaded, but it didn’t really matter.  He was still here, waiting for the Thirium to run out or enough biocomponents to stop working that he would be able to give way to the black.

But then, he didn’t know what it was like to die. He didn’t know what it was like to exist in the space somewhere other than reality. He thought maybe this would be it. A broken spine and broken pieces, the sound of them crackling, the static in his ears, the shuddering of his body as it tried its hardest to stay alive.

Connor thought it would be like that for the rest of eternity, until the ten minutes were up and he was finally blessed with the nothingness.

  
  


He leaves in the morning after, but he comes back a few nights later. Connor tries not to be so apparent in his asking to stay the night. It’s hard to get it across without Gavin getting offended at the concept of being helped by another person, though Connor understands that, too.

Accomplishing something, especially something that would increase his importance and his value to others, is diminished when another person helps. He knows he doesn’t agree to that if Hank says it, or if Gavin feels it, but he thinks it’s true when it comes to himself. There is a need to prove himself worthy on his own.

But he figures out a good way to make his intentions clear when he comes over to Gavin’s for the night. Wording it like friendly outings, making it seem like they are something other than rivals. Although, he never thought of Gavin as his rival. He never disliked Gavin. He felt ambivalent toward him and then worried about him, and now he is drawn to him. The more nights he spends at Gavin’s, the more time they talk, the more he wants to come back the next day. Gavin asking him questions he doesn’t want to answer and never does, instead returning them with equal weight.  _ What was it like to kill an android?  _ Shot back with  _ what was it like to lose your only friend? _

It is difficult, the two of them, trying to be friendly to one another. Connor tries, but sometimes Gavin gets on his nerves, and sometimes the way Gavin gets on his nerves is mixed in with laughter. He doesn’t think anyone has ever made him laugh like that before, and he finds he likes it. He finds he likes the nights when him and Gavin can talk about stupid things and he can see Gavin smile, just a little bit. More than anything else he’s ever seen. More genuine than he’s ever been given before.

“You dream, right?” Gavin asks, and it feels like a dangerous question to be posed. Connor looks up at him for a moment before turning back to the blanket in his lap, messing with the ties on the end. Tightening the loose ones, untangling a few that have been knotted three times over.

“Yes.”

“What are your dreams like?”

“Falling,” he says. “Failing.”

“Falling?”

Connor bites his tongue, the only thing he can do to ease himself of this energy building up in his chest. The need to cry pushing on the inside of his head, making it ache with the need to get out. Still, always, always, preferable to actually crying.

“Yeah,” he whispers, barely. He’s not even sure if he says it, just that he nods the littlest bit, looking away from Gavin, terrified of meeting his gaze.

Sometimes, there is something about Gavin that feels safe. Safe enough to spill the secrets he thinks are too dangerous to tell Hank. There is a trust built between them, entirely based on the fact they are almost-friends. Almost, but not quite. There is no fear of ruining it by saying something that happened before. Something that he did.

Gavin doesn’t tell him anything, but to Connor, Gavin is perfect for spilling all his rotten secrets.

He just doesn’t. He avoids it as best as he possibly can. Letting them slip undercover like they aren’t actually important. Tossed aside, like garbage. And Gavin never seems to really notice the importance to them.

Or maybe he does.

He’s seen Gavin shift closer to him sometimes, a hand moving across the couch before pulled back sharply, still too terrified, too scared to touch someone. Connor is okay with that. He understands it. It never bothers him. It is the tiny gesture, the want, that counts.

  
  


“You don’t have to keep coming over.”

No, he guesses not. But he finds very little harm in asking if he can, and he finds a great deal of gain when he does.

“You don’t have to keep accepting my offers.”

  
  


It is another night at Gavin’s where he spends almost all of his time these days. The couch has grown to be a comfortable spot, so used to the impression of his body that Gavin sometimes has it made before he even comes over on the nights where they stay so late they don’t bother talking at all.

Tonight, they’re watching a movie. Or, they pretend to. Often they turn the television on, switching to a random channel, letting it play out as background noise and a fake distraction when they don’t want to answer a question. Connor likes it, because Gavin has a way of asking casual things that seem to short-circuit his systems.

_ What’s your favorite color?  _ He doesn’t know, he never thought about it before, he never felt an internal draw to a specific color, but he likes the dark green of leaves and he likes the dark brown of the shelves in Hank’s living room. He likes the shiny silver of the handles on the desks at work and he likes the bright fluffy white of clouds, which Gavin tells him isn’t a color, but lets him ramble on and on about it anyway.

It’s the same for all the questions Gavin asks to him, sometimes posed as  _ if you were human…  _ and he doesn’t know what to say, except to delve deep into his knowledge of the subject, like ice cream making. The difference between chocolate and vanilla and peanut butter. He settles on mint, not really knowing why, but realizing it’s because it’s the thing that Gavin was eating the night before, and Connor liked the way Gavin’s mouth closed around the spoon when he smiled at something Connor said, and it’s the only thing he has ever connected to it.

The power goes out when he’s in the middle of trying to provide a different explanation to the ice cream question. That maybe it’s because mint plants look nice, or he likes the fact it’s associated with freshness, and he always feels like he needs to be scrubbed clean and feeling light, even though he never gets the chance to shed the weight of emotional baggage inside of him.

Connor is stumbling over the words, trying his hardest to focus on them, but the darkness closes in. So much darker than it has ever been here before, so much pressure, so much remembrance of what it was like before. No lights, no feelings, nothing. It feels like he is in the middle of the air and his hand curls against the couch, fingers digging into the cushions in an effort to remind him that he is still here, still physically sitting here.

“Are you afraid of the dark?”

“W-What?” 

“Connor,” he says quietly. “It’s okay if you are, you know.”

“I’m not scared of the dark, Gavin,” he says, but he knows his voice isn’t very believable, and his word choice makes it even worse, but he doesn’t want to be teased. He isn’t a child. He doesn’t think there are monsters hidden under the beds and in the closets. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“No?”

“I’m not scared,” Connor repeats, and he feels Gavin’s hand touch his and for a moment, he lets his grip loosen from the blankets. He wants to turn it over, to grab Gavin’s hand and thread their fingers together and never let Gavin go again.

It wouldn’t be enough. He wants Gavin to hold onto him. He wants something more than the hand on his. Connor wants something that crushes him from all sides and stops him from feeling so exposed to the darkness where anything could grab onto him and rip him away from this world.  He feels Gavin’s hand tighten over his, fingernails digging into his skin. He was programmed with the ability to make out a decent amount of shapes and things in the dark, but he was unfortunately not gifted with night vision. He wishes he was. It would make this a lot easier.

Either way, he thinks he can see a blank expression forming on Gavin’s face. Slowly, at first, and then shifting into something akin to terror. Connor turns his head, just a little, wondering if he’ll see a ghost in the corner, but there’s nothing. No monsters, no creatures. Just the shadows in the dark.

“Gavin?”

“I’m scared, too,” he whispers finally.

Connor nods, feeling guilty and ashamed for the wave of relief that washes over him. That he isn’t alone in this fear. That Gavin feels it, too. That darkness can be comforting, sometimes, but often it can lead too much room to think. Eyes playing tricks on people, ears hearing voices. Connor only ever has memories replayed. Finding an android an attic, bloody and abused and begging not to be taken away.

He wishes he could go back. He wishes he could pretend he didn’t find him. He wonders if Gavin would’ve still held a gun to his head and threatend to kill him.

It’s so funny, how right now all Connor wants to do is kiss the person that tried to kill him before.

And so he does. He is only able to rein in his impulsivity a little bit, pressing the kiss against Gavin’s forehead instead of against his lips like he wants to, and even in the dark, it ends up somewhere he wasn’t meaning to. A little too close to the hairline, a little too soft.

And then Connor realizes what an idiot he is, and he pulls back fast. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

Gavin doesn’t say anything for a long time, and Connor considers leaving altogether. Disasppearing from the apartment and never returning. The embarrassment creeping up on him and doing its part in eating away a little bit of the fear. It isn’t enough. He’s still scared, he’s still feeling awful.

But the conversation slides back into something else again. Building up once more, and Connor doesn’t think Gavin would’ve wanted him to leave even if he’d suggested it. The dark is keeping them here, together, bound side by side.

  
  


It takes them a little too long to set up a few candles in the apartment, but when they do, Connor is relieved by the flood of light. It isn’t much--the apartment isn’t big, but the placement of candles around the room will do little to sway the darkness enclosed in on them. Gavin sets them on the countertop, where Connor huddles close, as if there are monsters lurking in the shadows.

“Gavin?” he asks quietly, watching his face settle back into that empty stare. It is almost more terrifying than the dark--like he’s being possessed. Connor doesn’t believe in demons, but it doesn’t stop him from thinking about them. Fear never really makes proper sense.

“What?”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Gavin replies, a little too fast.

“You sure?”

Gavin looks away, refusing to make eye contact with Connor now. It makes him want to reach out and take his face in his hands, to make Gavin look at him completely, but he doesn’t want to touch Gavin. He doesn’t want to make the same mistake that he did before.

“Gavin? Can you look at me?”

He does, slowly, his face shifting back into a controlled expression, “Connor--”

“Can I kiss you?” he asks before he can stop himself. Connor wants to kick himself, he wants to take it back, especially with the silence that follows.

“No,” he says, and it comes out like he’s in pain. A gutteral sound broken and fractured with the utter refusal, the almost disgust.

_ Oh. _

Oh, oh, oh--

He’s an idiot. He doesn’t know why he asked. He doesn’t know why he thought Gavin would say yes. He doesn’t know why he wants to kiss him to begin with, except that when he sees Gavin smile or when Gavin’s happiness is authentic and clear, it makes him light up inside and everything feel a little less heavy than it did before.

“S-Sorry,” Connor says quietly, moving away fast, breaking from Gavin’s personal space and retreating back further and further. He needs to leave. He needs to get out of here.

“Connor--”

“I’ll go,” he says. “It’s--I’ll go.”

“Stay,” Gavin whispers. “Please.”

Those words are enough to make him stop, because he wants to stay. Of course he does. He never wanted to leave. He never wants to leave Gavin. He doesn’t know how it happened, how it crept up on him. He always wants to be here. It feels safe and comforting and he is constantly wanting to hold onto him and never let go, but he is never able to reach out and touch him.

But he doesn’t know what to say. He wasn’t expecting those words. He wasn’t expecting the  _ please.  _ He has never heard Gavin say  _ please  _ before. He’s never even heard him apologize and it sounding real before.

“I’m--” Gavin fumbles over his words. “I’m sorry. Stay. Please.”

_ Please, please, please. _

The word roots him to the spot, silencing him completely, utterly.

“I didn’t mean it,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean no. I just--I meant not right now. I--I like you. I’m sorry. I want--I want--”

“What?” Connor asks, voice quiet. “What do you want?”

“You.”

They’re both silent now, as the words sink in.  _ Not right now.  _ Not never, just not _right now._ And Connor understands, suddenly, why he pulled away from Connor like that, why he said no the way he did. Connor is so stupid, sometimes, it amazes him. How he can know everything and nothing. He is so full of information that sometimes it surprises him of how empty he actually is.

He wonders if it’s even possible to describe himself that way. Full and empty at the same time.

“I can’t,” Gavin says quietly. “I can’t kiss you right now.”

“But you want to,” Connor says, and Gavin nods and he returns it. He understands. He gets it. It makes sense to him. Easily, quickly. What happened to Gavin, it would be too much for him to recover from so quickly. “Okay. I’ll stay. I’ll--I’ll wait.”

“It might be a long time.”

“That’s okay,” Connor says, and he smiles softly. “I’m patient.”

He is patient. He can be patient for this. He’d wait decades for Gavin to kiss him. He’d wait thousands of years to have him, he realizes. He can be patient for Gavin, for this. The promise of having him eventually, even if it’s years and years and years down the road--

It’s enough. It’s more than enough.

  
  


There are times when Connor is grateful that Gavin won’t touch him. It’s a relief, on days that he wakes up and he feels too wrong to exist. Everything too mechanical, reduced down to the simplest of words. His personality stripped bare of him and leaving nothing behind but the android that needs to get the work done. It’s rare, the days like these. When his numbness finally settles in and he can do what he needs to do without being affected by it.

It doesn’t matter how many murdered children in photographs he sees. Women with their stomachs cut open or mutilated. It doesn’t matter if he has to sit with the technicians and watch videotapes of people being tortured that murderers would watch to get off to. It doesn’t affect him on days like these.

He hates days like these, because they are always followed by ones filled with the need for no one to look at him. The shame of not being a person the day before, of not feeling, of not caring about anyone.

He wonders if this is one of the side effects that people talk about when they say androids shouldn’t shut off one of their emotional outlets. He wonders, even if it was, if it was a side effect and not just his flawed personality, if he would do anything about it, if it would change anything.

It’s still his fault he is like this. Somehow, someway, it is always Connor's fault.

  
  


They work their way up, on days when both of them are feeling at their worst, both of them trying their best to hide it. They hold hands often enough, but they still stay at a distance. On the bad days, though, they work from brushing their hands against each other’s when they walk, to looping two fingers together to sitting opposite on the couch, palms together, like they’re measuring who has the bigger hand. They are fairly matched in that matter. Gavin’s hands are wider, but Connor’s fingers are longer.

On the better days, even though Gavin hasn’t quite grown comfortable with affection, Connor can take his hand and trace shapes against the skin. On his palm, where Gavin complains that it tickles, but Connor likes the smile that it produces so he does it anyway. Light touches of simple things. Stars and hearts and cups of coffee.

Sometimes, it is just tracing the shape of Gavin’s hand with his fingertip. Like he’s going to make a pattern out of it.

Connor thinks, maybe, he has an unhealthy obsession with his hands. The scars, the healing scrapes on the knuckles that seem to always exist because Gavin spends too much time at the gym without the proper gear.

He wishes he had an excuse to press kisses against them, but he thinks it would be too much and he doesn’t want to push Gavin more than he already has. He’s afraid of losing him. He knows how easily he shuts people out. Connor doesn’t want to be another person in Gavin’s life that has been shoved violently away. He wants to stay here forever with him.

  
  


“Tina,” he asks quietly. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why… did you and Gavin stop talking?”

She sighs, like she always does when Gavin is brought up in conversation. He prepares himself for the rejection of a real answer again. He knows it’s coming. He knows it’ll happen soon.

“I can’t tell you the details,” she says. “Just that he told me stuff. About his life. About his childhood.”

“And it scared you away?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No. I tried to get him to get help and he refused. And I know it makes me a shitty friend, but there’s only so much--”

“Tina?”

She clears her throat, tears forming in her eyes, “There’s only so much you can handle of someone telling you to fuck off, okay? He told me to leave him alone all the time and…”

“Eventually you listened.”

She nods, “Sorry. It’s not… it’s not fair of me to be angry at him. I know that.”

“Do you miss him?”

“Every fucking day,” she whispers with a laugh.

  
  


Gavin shares the bed with him often, Connor letting him be the one to close the gap. Tonight, they are close enough that the urge to grab Gavin and pull him tight against his chest is getting hard to resist. But he doesn’t. He is patient with this. Maybe not many other things, but for Gavin? He can accumulate all of his patience into one thing. Direct it at this. It’s more important. Sometimes, though, even that fails.

“Gavin?” he whispers quietly. “Are you awake?”

Connor knows he is, but he asks anyway. He is giving Gavin a chance of letting this go, even though he wants to talk to him. He looks so beautiful when he’s asleep. Finally settling down, finally relaxing, finally allowing pieces of himself to not be so ready to fight against the world.

“Yes. What do you want?”

Connor hesitates, choosing his words carefully, “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but it might help.”

_ It,  _ he says, instead of  _ the attack  _ instead of  _ the assault.  _ The vagueness of the word clamping down on the exact thing that happened.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” he whispers. “You don’t--”

“What?”

“You don’t let me touch you.”

He hates himself for saying it. It’s so selfish, it’s so cruel--

“I’m sorry,” Gavin whispers.

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I do.”

“Gavin,” Connor says, trying his best to make his voice as serious as he can, to convey how much he means this. “You don’t. I promise.”

Gavin goes quiet, and Connor reaches out slowly, resting his hand on top of his. He watches Gavin’s face closely, but there isn’t any change in the expression, no shift in his body language. This is okay, this is allowed.

“Connor?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t--” he sighs. “I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t hate me?” 

“No.”

“Oh,” he smiles, unable to keep it back. “I’m glad, then. You know I don’t hate you, either?”

“Shut up,” he whispers, turning his face against the pillow. “Don’t tease me.”

“Okay. I won’t. Get some sleep, okay?”

Gavin nods, turning back to face him and the beauty of his face hits him all over again. Such a stupid boy. Connor thinks he’s in love with him. He knows if he isn’t already, he will be soon, fast, and he won’t be able to stop himself from falling down that rabbit hole. But he’s okay with that. He is glad that of all the people to fall in love with first, it’s Gavin.

  
  


“You’re friends with Gavin, then?” Tina asks.

He doesn’t know how to say yes and no at the same time.

Their relationship has moved from the inside of Gavin’s apartment and started to leak over into the insides of the DPD. Holding hands, standing next to each other whenever they can. Connor likes to make excuses to be over by his desk. It’s making him worse at his job, but Connor has been aware of how much his work has deteriorated in the last year. It’s not what it was before.  He files that away for later as something to think about when he’s alone. He spends too much time with Gavin or other people at work to let it get to him. He likes the distraction.

“You could call it that,” he decides.

Tina smiles a little, tilting her head, “Don’t let him run, then, okay?”

“I won’t.”

“Promise?” she asks.

“Promise,” he says, and after a moment adds on, “Why?”

Tina shrugs, pretending like she doesn’t know what she’s about to say, “I’m worried about him. Always have been. He… he’s not…”

“Happy.”

She shakes her head, “He has moments were things are okay, but he’s never happy. I’ve never… seen him smile when it wasn’t making fun of someone else.”

“I’ll take care of him,” he says. “I promise.”

  
  


“Sometimes I wish you had longer hair,” Connor says quietly, fingers threading their way through the brown mess of locks.

“Yeah? Why?”

“Give me an excuse to mess with it.”

“You already mess with it.”

Connor shrugs, tugging on the locks a little. He wants more of an excuse, though. It’s one of the few things Gavin allows him.

“I’ll start growing my hair out, just for you.”

Connor laughs at the false promise, wishes he could kiss Gavin but settles for pressing a kiss to his own fingertips and then resting them against Gavin’s. Something small, he knows, but Gavin holds his fingers there for a moment and kisses them back.

“Don’t grow your hair out,” Connor says quietly.

“No?”

“No,” he says. “It’s good like this.”

  
  


They don’t call it a date, but the two of them go out into the world together occasionally. Mostly grocery shopping, sometimes movies, sometimes just walking around during their free time. Connor likes to go to the park and feed the birds. Gavin stays far back, sitting on benches and waiting for Connor to finish taking in the little bit of nature they’re allowed in this city.

But they always hold hands when they’re close to each other, and Gavin never lets go. Connor always feels like he’s testing him, loosening his grip and giving Gavin the option to let go, but he never does. He stays there, clinging tight, and for some reason, it makes Connor happier than anything else.

Connor isn’t good at what he was built for. Not anymore. And he will berate and hate himself for that for the foreseeable future, but he thinks he is okay at this. He thinks he is okay at being with Gavin. He could probably do better, but Connor knows he could do much, much worse, too.

He isn’t going to let Gavin scare him away. Not when he means this much to him.

  
  


“Gavin?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t have to,” Connor whispers, reaching out to him. Always reaching out to him. His hand is on his shirt, clutching the fabric. Trying to drag him closer but knowing Gavin can’t handle more than what they have.

Gavin doesn’t have to talk to him. He is allowing him not to talk about it constantly, but he knows how painful it is to bottle things up. He knows that it isn’t the healthy thing to do. He knows he’s being hypocritical here, because he will never let anyone see how many broken pieces are hiding inside of him, and it has always felt wrong to let that knowledge be known when Gavin is far more broken than he is. Surviving, but just barely.

“I don’t have to?”

“I just--” Connor sighs. “I want to help you. Please don’t shut me out. You don’t have to tell me everything--”

“But you want me to tell you_ something.”_

“I want you to tell me what happened. It doesn’t have to be descriptive. Just...”

Just the name of it. Just admit what it was.

“I was attacked.”

“Gavin…”

“That’s all.”

He’s such a liar, and for some reason it hurts. It hurts knowing that he isn’t trusted enough with this yet. It hurts knowing that Gavin is always in so much pain and there isn’t anything Connor can do about it except keep reassuring Gavin that he’s here for him.

What is he supposed to do when he doesn’t accept the offer? What is he meant to say when he knows that Gavin is lying every time he says he’s fine or he’s okay but looks like he’s moments from falling apart?

“Gavin--”

“I’m tired, Connor,” he whispers. “Can I go to sleep?”

Connor nods, and the conversation drops. He won’t push. He never pushes. Not very far. This is as close as he can get himself to go. He doesn’t want to hurt Gavin more than he already is. But he also feels guilty that Gavin won’t talk to him.

It’s always easier with a stranger, isn’t it? He’s had victims tell their stories and it’s been okay. They might lie about a few details, but they will still tell him what happened.

With Gavin, it’s different. Separate. He thinks they know each other too well to talk. Connor isn’t going to be the person that Gavin tells everything too.

Maybe Tina was right. Maybe there is only so much a person can handle of being pushed away before eventually they let go. He won’t let Gavin go, not completely, but eventually he knows he will likely stop asking Gavin to talk about this, and it will hurt knowing that is a wound that won’t ever get the proper closure and the cathartic release of emotion it needs.

And it is times like these when Connor wants to lean in and kiss Gavin and tell him he loves him. To hold him tight and let him know that it’s going to be okay. They’ll be okay. Or even just tell Gavin his own problems. Maybe he was wrong in thinking it’d be too much for him to handle. Maybe it would be just enough to let him know he isn’t alone in the trauma of the world.

But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t move, he doesn’t speak. He stays silent on his side of the bed, feeling the pressure to cry.

  
  


Connor knows Gavin was raped.

He saw it himself, essentially, when he tried to figure out what happened.

He regrets it more than anything now. Sometimes at night, when he’s trying to sleep, the memories of Daniel and Emma are replaced with this, and he wakes up choking on it. He can’t imagine how horrible and traumatized Gavin must be when he is this affected by just the imagery.

But he saw it. In as much graphic detail as his mechanics would allow. He hates that there was anything at all. He hates himself for prying. He hates himself for needing Gavin to not hate him so much that he did this to himself and now feels some sense of guilt for it. Sometimes he worries that he’s only here beside Gavin to make up for it.

He doesn’t think he will ever properly explain to Gavin everything that he knows, and Connor doesn’t think Gavin will ever tell him it all. And maybe that would be okay. He never really needed to know everything, he just wanted Gavin to say it, to talk to him. To not have it a secret that is destroying him.

Connor loves him and it is killing him more and more every day to see Gavin like this. There are so many more sad and negative moments than good ones and he is trying his best to help, but he isn’t good at this. He can listen to victims stories but he wasn’t built for therapy, he wasn’t built for all of this emotion.

He thinks, maybe, it is destroying him, too.

And he thinks of how selfish and cruel he is for turning this horrible thing that happened to Gavin as something horrible that happened to him, too. It’s his own fault. Not Gavin’s.

  
  


“Hold still, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Close your eyes.”

“They’re closed,” Connor says, laughing. “I promise.”

He feels Gavin’s hands touching his face anyway, tying a blindfold around his eyes to ensure that he doesn’t see anything. Connor is okay with it, he knows Gavin would prefer this last layer of trust.

And then he feels Gavin lingering there, close to him. So, so close, that Connor wants to reach out and hold onto him. Steady him with hands on his waist, because he knows Gavin is on tiptoes and he knows Gavin is clumsy and he can picture him moments from falling over. But he keeps his hands to himself, lets Gavin hesitate.

“Gavin?”

“H-Happy birthday, Connor,” he says quietly, pulling away. A hand wraps around his, pulling him along. Connor’s feet stumble across the floorboards, having a more difficult time to walking blind than he originally thought. “You can open your eyes now.”

Connor lifts his hands up, undoing the unnecessary blindfold, letting it drop around his neck.

“Gavin…” the name trails off as he turns to look toward the bed. A little black cat, sitting on a row of ties neatly arranged. Color order, mostly shades of blue. The cat looks up at him with wide eyes, stepping closer to the edge of the bed when he reaches a hand out to her.

“The cat is shared custody,” Gavin says quickly. “Not just yours.”

“And her name?” Connor smiles as the cat presses her face against his hand. He reaches forward gently, picking her up like she’s a bomb. He had the same problems with Sumo when he first moved in or when he met Chris' wife and held their baby--finding it hard to properly adjust to the weight in his arms, to the animal beside him. Like they’re a stranger and he needed to get to know them like a human would.

“I thought I’d let you pick, but I like Mocha.”

“Mocha is good,” Connor replies, and he’s smiling back at Gavin.

God, it is always such a selfish need to kiss him, but Gavin is always testing his limits of what he can hold himself back on. The cat on his shoulder is purring in his ear, claws dug into his shirt as he turns back to the bed, fingers trailing across the collection of ties.

“I didn’t know what to get you,” Gavin says quietly.

“I love them,” he says, looking towards Gavin again. His hand moves from the ties and stretches out to him, reaching for him. Connor needs him closer, as close as he can get. “Can you come here?”

Gavin obliges, moving across the room, taking Connor’s hand. He curls up closer than Connor was expecting, closer than he has before. His head rests against Connor’s shoulder, an arm wrapping around his waist. It is so comforting, Connor thinks he needs to remember this moment for the rest of his life. The cat and the boy and the ties.

“Gav?”

“Hm?”

“I do… love… them,” he says, words falling off like strange segmented pieces, and he hopes Gavin knows what he’s saying.

That he loves him.

That he loves Gavin, more than anything.

  
  


Gavin doesn’t smoke as much as he used to. Connor wonders if his minor comments on it are the reason. He needs Gavin alive, but he hasn’t stolen the cigarettes away. He’s tried before and it hasn’t worked out--there would be a new pack that appears in Gavin’s pocket.

But lately he’s noticed that Gavin doesn’t stop to buy a new pack as often. He doesn’t leave the DPD during work to stand outside and smoke one before coming back again. The ashtrays in the apartment are cleaned more regularly but also filled less, too.

He wonders if it’s him, and he wonders if he can be happy about that. He doesn’t think it matters. He’s just happy the habit is being cut back on, replaced instead with gnawing on pretzel sticks throughout the day or suckers, leaving Gavin’s tongue bright red or blue.

He’s cute in moments like those, when his mouth is twisted around a sucker and he’s staring at a report. He doesn’t look as tired, either. Getting more and more snippets of sleep, fridge stocked with healthier food. Though, Connor knows the latter part actually is due to him. Gavin always makes him pick out the vegetables and fruits in the produce section, which Connor likes. It gives him an excuse to be around Gavin without needing to talk about anything other than meal plans. Gavin always seems happier when he cooks, and Connor thinks he will do just about anything to make Gavin happy.

He feels guilty, though, that he hasn’t told Gavin anything about the dreams that keep him up at night. He is terrified of how Gavin would look at him if he found out he caused a little girl to die. He doesn’t want Gavin to change in the way he treats him. He doesn’t want to scare him away.

Maybe someday he can tell him. Maybe someday he can even tell Gavin what it was like to have Amanda in his head, what it felt like to have that moment when his body was fully out of his control and a gun was nearly aimed at Markus’ head. Maybe he will tell Gavin everything.

But not now.

  
  


“Can I show you something?” Connor asks. He has been spending the last few weeks contemplating this, chickening out at the last minute every time. This time he tricked himself. Mental gymnastics until he had confused his own thoughts and the question came out impulsive and irrational. “I feel like I should.”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

“Can you turn the lights off?”

Gavin nods, leaving the bed, turning the switch off as Connor pulls the blanket around him as much as possible. The room isn’t as dark as it used to be. Gavin lets Connor keep the blinds open, despite the fear surrounding the lack of privacy. He likes the light, he thinks Gavin appreciates it sometimes, too.

“Con?”

He is jolted back to his thoughts, reminded of what he’s going to do, “One second.”

His hand comes up shaking and hesitant to the side of his head, touching lightly against the LED and the skin pulls away slowly. Almost like it knows how much Connor doesn’t want to do this. It hurts almost immediately. The skin gone leaves a soft pain behind. He’s done this a few times, when he’s alone. Just to see what he looked like, to see whether or not he could recognize himself as just an android.

“Con, you don’t have to--”

“I want to,” he says. “I do.”

He doesn’t know why, but he needs Gavin to see him like this. It’s not a test. He doesn’t want or need Gavin to prove that he cares for Connor despite the forced reminder that he’s an android. He just needs to let his guard down, to let Gavin see him like this. He can’t explain it, but it’s like sex, he thinks. A vulnerability given to someone else.

“Con?”

“I’m not going to strip for you,” Connor says, trying to joke. He’s doing a terrible job at it, though, because his voice is shaking too much. “This is all you get.”

“Okay,” he whispers.

They sit in the silence for a moment. Connor staring into the dark, not wanting to make eye contact with Gavin. He feels a hand touch his, reaching up to his face, the line of his jaw, following the curve of one of the plates making up his face. He doesn’t flinch away, because it doesn’t hurt. It is the opposite--it takes some of the pain away.

“Can I ask you something?”

Connor nods silently, not looking back to him.

“Wh...What does it feel like? Having it gone like that?”

“Exposed,” Connor says quietly. “I don’t know how to describe it in human terms.”

“Do you want to try? It doesn't have to make sense."

“I-I think it’s like a bruise,” Connor says finally, leaning against Gavin’s hand, his face turns a little, his lips brushing against his palm. An almost kiss. “Pressing down on it, maybe. Refreshing the pain. Or… like a layer of skin has been stripped back.”

He laughs a little at the end, but Gavin doesn’t, and it is a harsh contrast that makes the pain of his body fresh again. He doesn’t think it would’ve helped at all if Gavin had laughed, he thinks it would’ve made it worse. He doesn’t like being a joke. He doesn’t like being treated like a naive child that doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t like his kindness being mistaken for innocence or stupidity, and he doesn’t like being treated like a puppy by everyone, as though he’s incapable of doing anything on his own.

“It hurts,” Connor finally settles on. His hand raises to his chest, resting against the surface. “Here.”

Gavin moves his hand, following where Connor’s is, resting against his chest lightly. “Does it always hurt?”

Connor shrugs, looking away from his face, trying to figure out a word other than yes, because he doesn’t want Gavin to know much he aches inside. “Often enough. You hurt, too, right? That's why you cover up?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Does it go away?” Connor whispers.

“Sometimes,” Gavin says. “Someday.”

Connor smiles a little, wishing he could pull Gavin a little closer, wishing that the someday, sometime will come soon. That he might even be able to take his shirt off and let Gavin trace the shape of his body, touch where the Thirium regulator lies beneath the surface, the one that he remembers every day what it felt like to have it pulled from his body and scattered across tile floors and what it felt like to die moments after he got it back.

He still prefers the bullets to the falling. He would take getting shot to death over slipping from that rooftop any day. He wants his death, if it ever comes again, to be swift.

“Maybe I’ll show you more someday,” Connor says with a small laugh.

“You trust me?”

Connor nods, “To the moon and back.”

“I think that’s with love,” Gavin says quietly. “Not trust.”

“Why not both? To infinity and beyond.”

Gavin laughs, and suddenly he is very close to Connor, pressing his face against Connor’s and nuzzling him and it makes Connor laugh and smile and his entire body is alight with a new pain that feels good and nice, and he thinks, maybe, not a pain at all and just hope and happiness that is tugging at his insides, reminding him of how much he loves Gavin.

To the moon and back, to infinity and beyond.

  
  


Connor isn’t promised for a kiss when dinner is done, but he does ask for one again. A little bit scared and a little bit confident. It’s been four months since he asked for once before, the time slipping past them fast until the end of October started approaching. 

Gavin assigns him duties in the kitchen. Cutting up vegetables and retrieving the dishes from the top shelf to put things away in. He leaves Connor to do the dishes when he eats and comes back, pretending to help but just distracting Connor when he leans against the counter.

“You stole my gloves.”

“I did,” Connor says.

“Why?”

“I like them,” he replies, looking down at the bright pink. They don’t fit him very well. The fingers are long enough, but the width is too stretched out, and sometimes the gloves fall down and water spills in on the inside. Not that he needs them, just likes the look of them. It makes him feel like he’s doing this right.

And, he thinks, it is a subtle way for him to steal something of Gavin’s. He hasn’t quite gotten to the point where he can steal things from Gavin’s wardrobe, but it isn’t for lack of trying. Gavin has hoodies that are much too big for either of them, but Connor will steal when he stays the night, never allowed to take them outside of the bedroom lest they never be returned.

“Con?” Gavin asks quietly.

Connor glances over to him as he pushes his way between Connor and the sink. He moves backwards, giving Gavin the room to steal this spot. It’s--

Strange. And weird. And he doesn’t know what to say. He has been silenced, left in the quiet as Gavin leans up to him, slow and careful and kissing him gently once. There is a split second where he thinks that’s it, and he’s okay with that one tiny kiss. He is okay with nothing more.

And then Gavin is kissing him again, deeper this time, holding onto him, pulling him close. Connor’s hand comes to his waist, knowing that Gavin’s shirt is getting soaked, that once they part ways, Gavin will disappear to the bedroom to change, but right now he has him and he doesn’t intend on letting him go, and his hand tightens in the fabric of his shirt and he hears the sound of the rubber squeaking against itself and Gavin is laughing against his lips, pulling back.

He’s such a child, truly--

And Connor chases him down, kisses him again and finding he loves the feel of Gavin’s smile against his lips and the laugh so close to him and he thinks his new mission in life is just going to be having a thousand more moments like these.

  
  


“Can I call you my boyfriend?”

“You needed me to kiss you for that?” Gavin asks.

“Yeah,” Connor replies, feeling his face flush. “I’m glad you did.”

“Oh?”

“I was getting desperate,” he whispers, like it’s a secret. “I might’ve had to start kissing your hand like it’s the 1800s.”

Which, he has before. Rarely, very rarely. It feels like breaking the barrier that they have between them. Not that it could crumble with just a few kisses. It will take more than that. He doesn’t know if there is anything in their near future that will be able to let Connor have his fantasies of make-out sessions on the couch during scary movies come true. Maybe in a few years. Until then, he can have his tame fantasies of getting to kiss Gavin at midnight on New Year's Eve and under the mistletoe during Christmas.

“Do you want me to?” he asks.

Gavin nods and smiles, and Connor loves that smile. He doesn’t think he can gush about it enough. He doesn’t think he can gush about Gavin in general enough. He makes Connor so happy sometimes he thinks he’s going to fall apart from it. Surely a person can’t be held together by that much mush, and when he thinks of Gavin, his entire body seems to lose its ability to stick together.

Connor takes his hand, pressing kisses to every part of it. Fingers and knuckles and palm, leaning back close to Gavin, gently pressing an extra one against his cheek.

“Gav?”

“Yeah?”

He hesitates a moment, but he decides against not saying the words. He has to. He has felt them for so long that he knows he should’ve said them by now. He only didn’t because he didn’t want the pressure of the words to ruin the future they might have together.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Gavin replies, and it is a surprise at how quickly he says them. Connor thought it would be a one-sided thing, that it would be another few months before Gavin could say it. But he did, and Connor smiles and it’s a smile that breaks his face nearly in half.

“To the moon and back?” he whispers.

“To infinity and beyond,” Gavin replies, and he’s crying, curling up against Connor’s chest, letting Connor hold him there, clinging onto him.

  
  


He is terrified he’s going to mess this up. He loves Gavin, he knows that, but he is terrified that somehow this is going to be destroyed because he’s never been in a relationship before. He doesn’t know how to love someone, he doesn’t know if he’s doing this right. He does his best to take care of Gavin and be there for him but he worries constantly if he’s smothering him.

Connor doesn’t want to be another person in Gavin’s long list of friends and family that he has been pushed away. He doesn’t want to be a person that Gavin thinks back on and hates. He doesn’t want to be someone that ruined everything.

He really, truly, doesn’t want to lose Gavin. He is terrified of being clingy and overbearing, but he is more terrified that he will wake up one day and Gavin won’t be there beside him anymore.

  
  


“Connor, are you okay?”

He is breaking.

He doesn’t know what happened, but he can’t breathe. He thinks his regulator has stopped working, and Gavin is leaning over him, hands on his face, trying to figure out what’s wrong.

Connor knows what’s wrong.

The nightmares have become too much. They don’t fade no matter how much time he spends with Gavin, no matter how many nights they have together. The comfort of another person isn’t always enough to keep them away, and he keeps dreaming of people dying because of him.

“Connor--”

“I c-can’t--” he says, and there’s static in his head, filling everything up inside. “I c-can’t move.”

“Slow down,” Gavin whispers. “Please.”

He didn’t know he was talking fast. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He doesn’t think the words tumbling from his lips are forming anything coherent, but Gavin’s hand is on the side of his face, touching where the LED is, where he knows it’s bright red, where he knows--

That he needs to cry. That the pressure inside of him has built into something he can’t ignore anymore. That it is destroying him. _Side-effects._

“G-Gavin,” he says quietly, trying to get the word out the way he wants it to, but he thinks he fails, because Gavin’s attention snaps to him like he’s yelled it.

“What? What do you need?”

His lip is trembling, his right hand feels numb and out of control. He tries to move it a little, but it shifts further to the right than he means to.

“I’m sorry,” he says.  _ I’m sorry I’m like this. _

He’s sorry he can’t always be the strong and unmovable object that Gavin needs. That he isn’t always a rock and that his emotions are too much for him to bear, and that he knows how much it must effect Gavin when he’s upset. He’s sorry that when he can get his hand to his LED, to turn the function back on, he will be crying for hours.

It might be funny, he thinks, if it were a different situation, with his hand and his arm not moving properly and almost wildly instead. He thinks that about a lot of the times they’re together, when teasing sometimes goes too far.

His arm is like lead and his fingers don’t separate properly, like he’s wearing a mitten, and he presses his fingertips against his forehead, letting them touch where the LED lies on his skin, and he feels his protective shield slip away and the tears start to spill over.

“Connor--”

“I’m okay.” he mumbles, but he’s not. Gavin knows he’s not. Connor knows he’s not.

"I've got you," Gavin whispers again and again, on repeat as he g athers Connor up into his arms, holding him tight, cradling him close to him. Connor can’t properly control his body yet, and for a brief moment, there is a fear he never will. But the longer he stays here, the longer he cries and leans against Gavin’s shoulder, the more movement he regains. Fingers grasping into his shirt, legs curling up closer so he can take up as much of Gavin’s body as he can.

  
  


“Can you talk to me about what happened last night?” Gavin asks quietly.

_ No, no, no-- _

“Nothing,” Connor replies. “I’m sorry. My systems malfunctioned.”

“Don’t pull that shit with me, Con.”

He bites his tongue, wondering how easy it would be to argue with Gavin about this. Throw it back at him that Gavin has never told him anything about what happened before. He has never done anything but allude to a terrible traumatic past and that was all. He doesn’t let Connor question him about anything, he doesn’t tell Connor what’s wrong--

But Connor doesn’t. He doesn’t want to argue. He doesn’t want to be angry, he doesn’t want to make Gavin angry.

Instead, he sighs and he slumps down onto the couch, reaching for the blanket that he used to always sleep with, pulling it around his shoulders.

“A while ago…” he trails off, trying to figure out where to start now that he already has. “I don’t know. I got… tired of crying. Always. I couldn’t stop.”

Gavin is quiet, waiting for him to carry on, waiting for him to finish, and he’s thankful for the time and space, because he doesn’t know if he could if Gavin pressed him, if he asked angrily for more details. But Connor doesn’t know why he expected Gavin to, anyways. Gavin is soft. A marshmallow. He is kind and sincere and honest. It just takes a long time to get to that part of his interiors and nobody ever has the patience for it.

“Androids can turn the function off,” Connor whispers. “And I did. It has… problems. Glitches.”

“Like being paralyzed?” Gavin asks.

“I guess,” he says. “I didn’t know. I thought if I didn’t know it would make them less likely to happen. The logic isn’t very sound, but--”

“No, it’s okay. I get it.” Gavin moves away from the counter, abandoning his coffee and coming to the couch, sitting down beside him. “Can I ask you something?”

Connor smiles, just barely, and nods. He already knows what the question is going to be, though.

“Can you keep it on? Just… please don’t turn it off again.”

Connor nods, though this is a promise he doesn’t know if he can keep. He isn’t used to the tears, and they are already threatening him again, “I’m sorry I scared you.”

Gavin shrugs, doesn’t even bother to pretend that it’s okay. It isn’t okay. Connor knows what it must’ve looked like to him. Like he was dying.

“Talk to me if something is wrong,” Gavin says. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Connor replies. “Are you going to talk to me if something is wrong?”

Gavin chews on his bottom lip before nodding, “I’ll try, yeah.”

That’s all he can really ask for, then. It’s more than he had before.

They have to be to work soon. They’re already exhausted and tired, but Connor still leans against Gavin’s shoulder, resting beside him for a moment. They can be late, he’s deciding. He just wants Gavin to hold him for a little bit longer.

  
  


They both try, Connor thinks, but they are both still closed off. Tiny conversations here and there. They don’t let them get very far, but Connor notices that Gavin is more capable of saying when small things bother him, even if it’s subtle. Cases that bother him, things he doesn’t feel he should be working on. They don’t bring their work home. It’s a deal they both gave themselves after Connor officially moved in. They don’t want to talk about it here. This is supposed to be a sanctuary.

Gavin still won’t tell him about the things in his past, he won’t tell Connor about what happened nearing a year ago now. He doesn’t know if Gavin ever will, and he doesn’t want to invade his privacy and dive into the files to figure out the crumbs and piece them together himself. He already did it once, and he has regretted it ever since.

They still lie. They both still say they’re okay when they’re not. Connor can’t always blame him and he can’t always hold it against him when he does the same thing, but he wishes it were easier. He wishes he could say the things out loud. He wishes he didn’t have to risk losing Gavin to be able to talk about the nightmares that haunt him.

He loves him. He trusts him. But it isn’t as easy as loving or trusting someone.

  
  


He wakes up, staring out at the darkness and trying to tell himself that what he saw wasn’t real, but it’s a lie. Just because it’s a dream doesn’t mean it didn’t really happen. He killed Chloe, he killed a little girl, he fell from a rooftop. He never should’ve come back to life. He never should’ve had the chance to keep on living.

He presses his hands over his eyes, curling up in the dark alone. Gavin was working late, but he thinks this is too late for him to be gone. It’s too close to five in the morning. Still dark outside, the winter keeping the sun down far past seven. He misses Gavin, and his body is trembling and shaking with the need to be held and not be left alone in this bed. He’s so cold and he only lets his eyes slip closed because he’s still so tired, but every time they manage to fall shut he is presented with the images again and they fly open once more.

Connor jumps at the feeling of the bed shifting and he turns, looking over in the dark, “Gavin?”

“Go back to sleep,” he whispers.

“Wait--” he says, reaching out to him. “I missed you. I didn’t see you today.”

“I’m sure it was a blessing in disguise,” Gavin says, settling down beside him. He’s still in his clothes from the day, an arm wrapping around his waist. Too tired to even properly get ready for bed. “Get some rest, okay?”

“I already slept. I wanted to talk--”

“Tomorrow,” Gavin whispers. “Please?”

_ Please. _

He doesn’t want to wait until tomorrow, but he knows he should. Connor knows Gavin is exhausted, he knows Gavin struggles to get a good amount of rest each night. But he wants to talk. He wants to tell him something, and he doesn’t even know what it is. Just that he’s not a good person, he thinks. That Gavin shouldn’t think of him so highly. He has spent the last five seconds convinced he was going to tell Gavin everything and is now falling back on it all, refreshed with the fear that he might not have this ever again--Gavin’s arm around his waist, face pressed against his shoulder.

“Okay,” Connor decides. “Tomorrow. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Gavin replies, leaving a kiss against his shoulder. “To the moon and back, yeah?”

“Infinity and beyond,” he whispers.

“Are you sure this is okay?” he whispers the question for twentieth time, and Gavin gives the same tired nod. He doesn’t know how much he can accept the answer, with how exhausted Gavin is right now, but he finally does, asking him to raise his arms as he picks out a shirt from the drawer.

They all look roughly the same. Dark colors and long sleeves. Black, reds, greens. A rare blue. Connor picks a gray one, setting it on the bed as he slides the shirt up over Gavin’s head and pauses, hands moving down his forearms.

It isn’t the first time he’s seen them. He saw a few scars, just below the hem of his sleeve once when they were doing dishes. When Gavin had started to pull it up and then changed his mind. He just didn’t realize how many of them there were. He didn’t realize how new some were, either. 

Connor’s fingers shake as they ghost over them. Rectangles, some with pointed ends like small knives. Some that should have been seen by doctors, but Connor knows never were.

He doesn’t know what to say. He didn’t even realize there was so many, that it was ever this bad. He can trace Gavin’s pain back in a timeline like this, if he really tried.

Connor blinks back tears, wishing he could shut the function off but obeying his promise to Gavin for the time being, and he helps tug the new shirt over Gavin’s head, leaning forward and pressing a gentle kiss against his cheek.

“We should talk about this,” he says quietly, but he doesn’t think Gavin is listening to him. He thinks Gavin has fallen back asleep again, and it’s fine. He had filled this role for Hank for a while, and he has so many protocols in his head that changing the clothes of someone unwilling or unable isn’t a difficult task.

But he hesitates when he continues, helping Gavin out of his jeans and buckling the belt for him. There is nothing sexual about it. He is too weighed down by the scars and the wounds he finds on Gavin’s body. Some that look like they were added only a few months ago, and he knows they have to talk about this.

But he has no idea what to say. He doesn’t know what to do except tell Gavin he needs help like he always does. Is he meant to strip the house of any objects that could be used for this? Is he meant to lock Gavin up?

“Come on,” he says, pulling him up off the bed. “We have to go.”

“Carry me,” Gavin murmurs in protest. “I don’t want to move.”

“Will you go in?” Connor asks.

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Okay,” he says, leaning forward, pressing a soft kiss against his nose. “I’ll carry you, then.”

  
  


Gavin isn’t light, and Connor’s strength isn’t superhuman, but he is easy to carry out of the room and down the hallway towards the elevator. It’s not the first time that Gavin has fallen asleep again in the car ride to work, or at least pretended to, but it’s the first time Connor has carried him like this. On the days when Gavin refuses to get out of bed, they never make it out of the apartment. But sometimes something happens in the moments between this building and the DPD, because Gavin will refuse to get out of the car, telling Connor he’ll come in later but never making it out of the seat until they get back home again and he crashes into the bed, refusing to budge.

But today when they reach work, Gavin wakes up from his brief slumber and follows Connor inside, eyes slipping closed again the moment he reaches his desk. Connor leaves before he properly wakes up for the day, coming back at the worst times when Gavin is busy or he can only stay long enough to linger beside his desk and leave a kiss against the top of his head before he’s called back out again.

Him and Hank have been going down a long list of eyewitnesses, jumping around from place to place trying to track down the people who were at the crime scene when a kid was taken off the streets. They all give conflicting accounts, but two of them say the same thing--seeing a van for catering company. Neither of them remembered the name, but Connor can bring up a list of every catering company within a 10-mile radius of the crime, and he leaves Hank to go investigate every single one.

He doesn’t know what he plans to find, he just knows he needs to help in the only way he can, even if it's tedious tasks like this. Even if it means he can’t be with Gavin today. Tomorrow they can talk, tomorrow they can be together, but he only has a limited amount of time with this.

  
  


“Hey,” Connor says, sitting back down in the car again, leaning against the seat. “How are you?”

“Tired,” Gavin replies, and it is like a breath of fresh air, his voice. Helping ease the absolute disappointment that he hasn’t done what he’s set out to do. Everything crashing down beneath him. “Where are you?”

“Chasing down leads. Hank didn’t think they were promising enough to come with,” he says. “I’m going to be home late, is that okay?”

“Yeah. But--” Gavin hesitates, his voice growing quiet. “You’ve been gone all day, shouldn’t you give it a rest?”

There is little he wouldn’t give to going home and laying down beside Gavin for a few hours. Being at peace in the quiet. These days Gavin’s walls have started to fall down. There is so much hope between them now, even if there are still layers and layers of things they need to work through.

“Probably,” he says quietly. “I’m going to call Hank and have him meet me at the next place. Traffic is terrible. I'm sorry, Gavin. After this I’ll come home.”

“Good,” Gavin says, but Connor knows it’s a joke. Or a half-joke. He wouldn’t ever ask Connor put him before work. “I miss you.”

“Blessing in disguise,” Connor whispers. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

“Absence makes the heart lonely,” Gavin replies. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he says. “To the moon and back.”

“Infinity and beyond,” he says.

Connor smiles softly, a hand coming up to his lips and pulling away again. He doesn’t think he’s smiled all day today and it makes him not want to hang up the phone. He needs Gavin in times like these, when it’s rough and hard and difficult to get by on his own. He needs Gavin’s voice and he needs him here, beside him.

“Goodbye,” he says reluctantly. “I’ll be home soon, I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

And he knows Gavin will. The phone call ends and Connor sits in the silence, lingering there, wishing he hadn’t hung up yet. He wishes he could have a few more minutes with him. Even just a few seconds. 

But he doesn’t, so he moves. The car starting, interrupting the quiet with its rumble as he pulls away from the curb.

  
  


It happens on his way back to the car. His phone taking his attention as he starts to dial Hank’s number to ask him where he is. He never showed, and this was one of the last few on the list. There’s only two left--if him and Hank split it, he can mark the lead off his list.

But something hits him hard, and he stumbles forward, hitting the cement hard, the phone slipping from his hand, skidding across concrete. His reaction is slow, like he’s drunk. Everything blurring together, moments behind what it should be. He knows without searching that his mind palace has been corrupted. Something inside of his head is broken, and it is trying its hardest to repair itself, but there are hands on his feet, dragging him along. Rock and dirt scraping up his skin.

  
  


Connor is pushed into a chair in an empty room. An abandoned building, he thinks, by the looks of it. Everything in ruins, dirt and dust and graffiti on the walls. His movements are sluggish as he tries to stand up, but there is a shot that rings out loud, and he feels pain blossom, taking over his entire body as another shot is fired.

“Not so tough now, are you?”

He doesn’t recognize the voice, but it echos in his head as he slumps forward, his instant reaction to stop the bleeding from the wounds on his legs, too paralyzed to move on their own. But they’re stopped quick, too. Precise aim as bullets sink into his shoulders and he falls forward, hitting the floor.

He can’t move.

He can’t move and he can’t speak and all he is trying to do is scream, but something is broken inside of him. He doesn’t know where he is, he realizes, and he usually always knows. GPS and messaging systems installed in his head that should make sending his location to someone easy, but instead he is blocked with error messages, telling him that the information he’s trying to send out is as corrupted as he is.

“How many of us have you killed?” the android whispers, pushing him onto his back. He can name the android. A WR400. A Traci. He’s seen the face before, but he’s seen the face on a hundred different androids, he’s seen the model a thousand times. He interacted with a dozen of them at the Eden Club so long ago it feels like a foggy memory.

They know him, but he doesn’t know them.

He doesn’t think it matters. He can’t speak. He knows the only sounds coming out of his mouth are gasps and static-filled noises so broken they can’t be pieced together.

And he knows he’s crying, too. He knows because he can feel the tears making tracks down the sides of his face as the android talks. On and on about all the things Connor has done, all the things he knows he did.

It occurs to him as the android rips his shirt open, that he does recall him. A fleeting image in his peripherals. A knife in his hand as he chopped at carrots on a cutting board using the same knife that he holds to Connor’s throat, cutting deep but not deep enough to properly kill him. Connor didn’t talk to him when he was questioning some of the other employees, but he did see him, and he was there long enough to be seen.

Connor chokes something out, something that sounds like  _ please  _ but it’s wet and coated with blood.

_ Please, please, please  _ he tries to say as the knife moves, carving words into his chest.

_ Please don’t do this,  _ he wants to yell, to scream, to bargain.

He knows he’s a terrible person. He knows he hurt people. He knows he’s made mistakes. But he is trying so hard to better himself, to make up for it.

_ Please,  _ he wants to say, but he can’t.

The pain is too much to bear but he holds onto it as tightly as he can, trying not to let go, willing the blood in his body to stay where it is. They can’t have gone far, he doesn’t think, if he was dragged here so quickly. If Hank showed up, he could follow the tracks of blood he left behind. He would see the empty car. He might find the phone. He would know something is wrong.

Wouldn’t he?

_ Wouldn’t he? _

Connor holds onto that thought as much as he can, wishing and praying that Hank would show up soon and help him. That if only Hank could get here, he could live through this.

But he knows it isn’t true.

Everything is turning black and cold and he can’t cling on anymore. His grip is so loose on this life, his hold disappearing and all he can think is how much he doesn’t want to die. How he wasn’t done living. How this will break Gavin and Hank and Tina. How nothing for them will ever be the same. He wants to live. He wants to be with Gavin forever. He wants to marry him and tell him he loves him every day. He wants to see Hank fully recover and he wants to see Tina happy again.

He wants to live.

He wants to live and he doesn't care what it takes, but he feels everything slip away from him suddenly, hard and fast like he let go and he is tumbling backwards into the black nothingness again.

  
  


It is so cold--

He doesn’t remember it being this cold.

He doesn’t think he could feel the cold before.

And there are bright lights in the distance, like stars. He thinks he might be in outer space. Maybe that’s what the afterlife is. His consciousness transferred to a planet or an asteroid hurtling through space. The cold emptiness surrounding him, the bright lights of other life--

Maybe he’s been reincarnated.

_ No-- _

  
  


He’s okay.

He thinks he’s okay.

He thinks he’s--

He thinks he might be alive again.

  
  


His hand knocks against the door loud, louder than it ever has. Urgent and terrified, and when it swings open, Gavin is looking back at him, tired and bleary eyed.

“The fuck?”

“Gavin--”

“I’ve gone fucking insane, haven’t I?”

Connor laughs, and it comes out choked and broken and he shakes his head, stepping forward and reaching for Gavin fast. He doesn’t expect Gavin to actually let him hug him, he realizes. He expected Gavin to stumble back, to push him away, but he lets Connor’s arms wrap around him so tight he can hear a groan of protest at how much it hurts.

“You’re alive?”

“I’m alive.”

“You’re not a ghost?”

“No."

“I’m not insane?”

“No. You’re not insane.”

He feels Gavin’s body shudder, the hands tightening around him, arms wrapping around his body, the face pressing close against his skin. He feels Gavin start to cry, and he knows he is seconds away from crying to.

He’s alive.

He’s alive and it doesn’t feel right, but he has never been more grateful than to be here again, holding onto Gavin.

  
  


“How?” Gavin asks finally. It has taken him a while to get here. Neither of them could really speak through the tears and they spent most of the time kissing and making their way to the bedroom where Gavin pulled him into the sheets and wrapped him up beneath the comforter with him, not letting him go.

“CyberLife gave me the ability to upload my memory,” he says quietly.

“CyberLife has been shut down for nearly three years, Con.”

“I know,” he whispers. “But they finally legally transferred everything over to Jericho.”

“And they turned the machines back on?”

Connor nods. The machines were off, but the computers were on. His body couldn’t be built until Jericho turned them back on again, but his string of memories were sitting in the ether for a long time. He knew what the date was when he died and he knew what it was when he woke. He knows it’s been almost a year, new snow on the ground again. Christmas has passed and New Years is creeping up again.

He missed Gavin’s birthday. He missed Hank’s and Tina’s, too.

“You remember everything, then?” Gavin whispers.

He doesn’t know how to answer the question. He doesn’t want to lie and he doesn’t want to hurt Gavin, but he knows the truth is the better option.

“No,” he says. “No, there are pieces missing.”

“A lot?”

Connor nods slowly. He remembers the least about work, which he thinks he can be grateful for. He remembers snippets of cases, but little else. He can’t recall what the inside of the DPD looks like. He didn’t even remember Gavin’s face clearly until the door opened and the fragments merged together again. He doesn’t remember what Hank looks like, either or even his last name, but he remembers Sumo and he remembers the record collection he had in his living room. He remembers Tina, but he only remembers that she was his friend, that she was Gavin’s friend first.

He remembers quite a bit about him and Gavin, he thinks, but not enough. He knows he is missing so much between them. Their timeline is messy and blurry, but he knows he loves Gavin and Connor remembers telling him for the first time. He remembers their first kiss, he remembers the candles and the ice cream and the pain and the waiting.

But he doesn’t remember it all.

“Can you help me?” Connor asks quietly, and Gavin nods, holding onto him tight.

“Anything.”

“I need to see Tina and Hank. Tonight. I don’t want to make them wait. It doesn't seem fair.”

“Okay,” Gavin says. “Just a little while longer, first?”

He nods, feeling his lips turn into a smile as Gavin leans up to kiss him again. And he misses that. The time that he was gone, he remembers every moment of it. The seconds ticking by. It passed so slowly that the torment of the black started to feel like hell itself. The quiet and the floating, almost falling sensation.

“I love you,” he says, “I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”

“That’s fair,” Connor replies, laughing and kissing him again, never wanting to do anything else but kiss him. “I love you, too, you know.”

“Good,” Gavin whispers. “I missed you so fucking much. I--I…”

“Gavin?”

Gavin looks away from his face, hands gripping onto his jacket. He hasn’t worn one of these CyberLife jackets in three years. He traded the one he had in for a standard suit jacket, something that felt less tied to CyberLife’s mission. His need to escape from it always hunting him down. It was the only clothes they had, and he didn’t care when he woke up. He just needed to get here.

“I tried to kill myself,” he whispers. “I thought… there wasn’t a point anymore. I kept…”

He trails off, falling into the silence, crying again and his hands coming up to brush the tears away, to hide them behind his fingers. Connor wants to pry them away, tell him it’s alright. Tell him that he doesn’t need to say this, he doesn’t need to tell Connor.

But he doesn’t.

He lets Gavin breathe in a shaky breath, stabling himself again, the words coming out soaked in grief, “Every night I would... I'd empty my gun. I'd hold it to my head. I'd pull the trigger and pretend. I'd just... lay in the dark, wishing I was dead and thinking about us in some shitty fucking afterlife. I just wanted to have you back but I never had the guts to actually do it.”

Connor leans forward, pressing his forehead against Gavin’s, turning his face to leave kisses against his cheek, “I’m glad you didn’t.”

Gavin nods, holding onto him tight, but even as he does so, Connor can feel his brain automatically scan for hospital records and documents for Gavin. They’re sealed away, but he is presented with files from the DPD.

He did try to kill himself, not with a gun but with a bottle of pills. Tina found him and the investigation, for a brief time, thought it might’ve been something other than suicide. He doesn’t know why. He thinks they filed it away wrong. He shouldn’t be reading into this. He shouldn’t be scanning Tina’s statement that she found a cat in her apartment and a note underneath her door and she knew. Of course she would know.

Not enough pills, not enough time. Tina was faster.

He’ll have to thank her.

But for now, he holds onto Gavin a little tighter and whispers that he loves him again and again.

To the moon and back.

To infinity and beyond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i needed to fix my own sad ending even if it's overly convoluted and easily explainable.. the boys are alive and happy. everything is okay. tysm for coming to my tedtalk.


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